Alloway was not impressed by “Bad” Painting and New Image Painting because he found them shallow, unadventurous, and largely marketdriven. However, even if the art was largely derived from the market, Alloway would not have dismissed it for that reason alone. Photo-Realism had come into that category, but he felt the work justified attention because it had authenticity as a type of art. Transavantgardia and Neo-Expressionism came just too late for Alloway to be fully involved. According to gallery directors, Kim Levin wrote in Arts Magazine in September 1981, “Last year it was pattern and decoration, this year it's the Italians, next year the Germans” Artforum featured articles on Schnabel, Clemente, Penck, and Salle in 1981, while Donald Kuspit wrote about “The New (?) Expressionism: Art as Damaged Goods.” Art News featured “The Italian Art Scene” in March 1981, having reviewed A New Spirit in Painting in 1981. By October 1982, the magazine was declaring that “No island is an island: New York discovers the Europeans.” Art in America also reviewed A New Spirit and, in September 1982, devoted an issue to contemporary art in Europe, with Carter Ratcliff writing about some Transavantgardia artists, and Kuspit discussing “German Art Today.” Neo-Expressionism was the subject of a special issue in December 1982. But, during the arrival of Neo-Expressionism, Alloway's health was rapidly declining, and he had neither the physical ability, nor the inclination, to be involved.

One of the important roles of art criticism, Alloway had argued, is that it can “orient viewers towards work while it is new.” At the end of the 1970s, and for the first time, he was not responding to new art in the sense of what was latest, in any engaged way. He was ceasing to be a critic to whom one paid attention, around 1980. The main reason was his declining health. Major operations began in 1979, and by the end of 1981 he was confined to a wheelchair. He was not, of course, voluntarily disengaging from all new art, but the difficulties he had in visiting galleries, meant that he increasingly relied on seeing new work from illustrations provided by an artist or gallery.