I too feel I should barge in.. there was a time I think when artists were swept along by the 'medium as message' theme until the general ouevre smacked of a sameness, a been there done that.
the self referential and appropriations now 'allowed' by postmodernity have become a logical extension of what otherwise loomed as a near crises in art practice.
The conceptual schools had 'painted' themselves into a corner, a reductio absurdum, where the real art was being practised by the theorists in a contest to pull off the most obscure metaphor.
but people seem to have a need to explore to explain and depict this in a plastic form to allow sccrutiny in an effort to understand their world; I don't think this has changed since people found they could do this on cave walls.
Realism in this age, is now one way amongst many for today's artists of expanding the understanding of the world .... if you were to ask me