Painting, sculpting, disappearing?

[Belacqua]

Nowadays the most popular mediums are literature, and cinema in my opinion.

And in schools that used to teach painting, it's far more likely they're offering classes in computer game design or anime. That's what the kids want to learn these days. 

It seems to me that other mediums are dying out. Such as paintings and sculptures. Who says I want to become a painter (beyond hobby)? Or a sculptor? 

There's certainly a terrible drop in quality. Partly it had to do with the change in education in the '60s and '70s. Teachers who had themselves trained in traditional painting techniques got the fashionable idea that teaching anything at all would stifle creativity. So basically they taught nothing, or had critiques where people talked about theory instead of practice.

In fact what happens when a student has no guidance isn't the free flowering of expression but the imitation of whatever happens to be fashionable. And by now we're into the second or third generation of teachers who were taught nothing. 

Who can appreciate a painting (besides academics or q very small niche of people)? 

I'd say anybody has the potential to appreciate good art. In most cases (not all) a wonderful painting will appeal immediately, and we don't need to study up on it to be grabbed by it. Then the best art continues to unfold and reward viewing, and these deeper levels will require repeated attention and asking questions.       

But to get anywhere with it at all requires calm attention, and we don't live in an era of calm attention. Flashy action and explosions distract us.

There are some techniques that have gone basically extinct such as wood engraving (look at Gustavo Dore illustrations of Divine Comedy or Quijote for reference). 

Pretty sure that Doré's illustrations are copper plate engraving. But your point stands -- it is a time consuming technique-heavy medium, and doing it means your hands will be stained black pretty much all the time. Computer art is clean and you can use a really cool Mac instead of smelly chemicals.

Do you think these mediums will ever come back or will stay as they are now?

Mostly continued decline for the foreseeable future. Schools, dealers, and (increasingly) museums reward the trendy. Art has to function now like advertising -- its whole message is revealed in the first 30 seconds. And the message is nearly always nothing but "ooh, cool," or the recognition of a social injustice which everybody who goes to galleries is already aware of. E.g."discrimination is bad."

The only good news is that anybody who devotes himself seriously to serious painting and sculpture will tend to be an obsessed eccentric, who doesn't do it for fame. It's still possible that good things will get made. They won't be in the newspapers, though. But young people with potential will mostly be attracted to flashier media.