In recent years international art publications (Artforum, Texte Zur Kunst and others) have published a series of reflections on the role of painting in contemporary Western art, art theory and criticism. The main subjects focused on can be divided between two categories: first, how to revive interest in contemporary painting and its strategies in the critical discourse of art, and second, what ways could we expand the dominant theoretical perspective which is rather limited in terms of painting. Drawing on the fact that painting has not belonged within the scope of interest for theoreticians of contemporary Western art for more than thirty years, the gap between art criticism – in which painting hardly seems to exist – and the obvious multitude of contemporary painting strategies is highlighted here.