I didn't mean to imply that only abstract artists braved new form and content. Art history is full of great names who are realists: from Piero della Francesca to Michelangelo to Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Monet. In the twentieth century, Alice Neel bucked the abstract expressionist trend and just persevered in her own kind of expressionist portraits (that were pretty realistic compared to Pollock and his colleagues).
Alice Neel of Andy Warhol and her daughter-in-law in the last week of pregnancy (with husband in the background) and then with daughter Olivia.