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From the Gopnik article:
"Official portraitists don't share many of the tools, techniques and materials used by the contemporary artists whose work ends up in art museums -- they hardly even seem to share the same appetites. Recording a face for posterity and making it look fine and noble barely registers as something worth attempting in contemporary art, especially given how well it's been achieved before. What artist could hope to make a mark as a second Gilbert Stuart when there's hardly an American museum that doesn't already have a picture by the first ? When it comes to working in oil paint, the past's great portraitists have left so little breathing room that most artistically ambitious painters are likely to try their luck elsewhere."
Wow.
This is so patently ridiculous it's laughable.
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