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Whether realism is in fashion again is a moot point. The question is whether or not painting that values aestheticism, craftsmanship and honesty will be back in fashion.
I think one of he reasons 'realistic' work has been the whipping boy of the art market is the hegemony of French Academic School. Because of the sexually repressed Victorians, nudes could only be disguised as goddesses or shown off in slave market scenes such as in the egregious paintings of Alma-Tadema. Manet had the courage to challenge that stranglehold with his wonderful painting "Olympia", a frank portrait of a courtesan.
I think the experiments with color and format has in some way been liberating, but unfortunately painters have lost the idea of craftsmanship and replaced coherent picture making with exploring their own neuroses in paint.
A great deal of the changes in painting at that time came with the influx of Asian art with its sensuous color, formlessness. and lack of perspective. Artists were freed from the necessity to always depict form and to explore color for its on sake. In my opinion this produced one of the most joyful and exquisite eras of art, Impressionism. The play of color in a Degas, Monet, Van Gogh and a Frieseke are like listening to the most painfully beautiful passages in a Mozart concerto.
If 'realistic' painting is to 'come back', we cannot insist on exhuming the past, slavishly recreating it, celebrating only skill and excluding new points of view and freshness. Unfortunately what I see in this return to 'reality' is just that. There are acres and acres of quite skillful but trite paintings.
I think if we want to see a resurgence of representational or good painting we must challenge ourselves more, toss out tired concepts and dare to do something that may scare us a little.
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