Do we make real art anymore?

There are still plenty of representational artists, very good ones, the problem is that if you want to be one of those artists, and you find that type of work interesting, you are stuck with landscape painting much of the time if you don't have extremely patient and cooperative friends. Painting from photographs is a really second cl substitute for painting from life, and people just don't make the time for you. Painting from photographs is also extremely boring after a while, there is no creative feeling for a lot of us I think when we do that, hence you see distortions, surrealism, throwing out reality altogether. But if realism is your thing, it's not been edged out by contemporary work at all, see Lucian Freud, Wayne Theiboud, Pearlstein, Van Arno is a great one right now, check out an issue of Juxtapoz instead of Art Forum, and tool around DeviantArt. Humans still possess the skills to accomplish these types of things.