In his 1993 book The Exile's Return: Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era, McEvilley made an important contribution to the late twentieth century "death of painting" debate.
In the article "Heads it's Form, Tails it's not Content" McEvilley describes a theoretical framework for the formalist project presented by postwar critics such as Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried and Sheldon Nodelman [REF].