I believe Clear Lag clears them away. I have put painting up before and was wondering why they have disappeared and was wondering if it was Clear lag. Then I put more paintings on the wall and when clear lag hit, all the paintings disappeared.
Paintings are considered entities according to clear lag. I was just reading a thread about this the other day. So yes, CLAG will destroy paintings, and nothing can be done about it. So in a way, paintings are disabled.
It's confirmed then, it's ClearLag that gets rid of your paintings. The plugin considers them as entities. So yes, in a sense, paintings are disabled.