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Altarpieces similarity to modern info representation and GUI space makes them somehow anachronistically the most relevant from of painting, pre-renaissance painting systems matching those of the mass systems we interface with daily in which above-all information must be conveyed, supplanting figuration with codes: image as icons broken into frames and grids of information with a skeuomorphic impression of religious wonderment. It is no coincidence that devotional paintings contain the same figurative depth as a iPad screen. If today's painting is in a bad way it is because in its backtrace search for new relevance in historical modes it rutted itself at proto-modernist and surrealist modes (perhaps confusing that as its beginning) - historical points having higher covalence with advertising than with the slowly dawning hegemony of the interface which contains it. Though some have done well, Koether, Euler, Cerletty, Kelm, von Heyl in adopting a sort of hyper-link representation.
But so, J. Ceccaldi's Giotto blue and Manga/comic forces narrative frames read, conveying information, read as individual bits, the modern day christ figure in non-binary life state taken down from no cross magically superseding death and without a Madonna to wipe him, Subway Cumrag.
See too: Ray Yoshida at David Nolan