I suppose the answer to my question is no - as changing the display mode settings is not the same as the gradiantview command.
The cool thing about gradiantview was that you could swiftly turn it on and off. That is really useful when you work in Rhino professionally with architectural design.
Added to that you can create modified versions of the modes you want, then create a toolbar button with which you can quickly toggle between gradient and non-gradien version of a display mode.
The GradientView command was a stepping stone to get to the excellent display modes we have now (and have had for quite a while). As Nathan suggested, there are easy ways to toggle your display modes. Toolbars, aliases, even adding it to a context menu are quick ways to accomplish what you were used to with the obsolete GradientView command. We use all three and let the user decide which he/she likes best. Here is an example of how I have added it to a right click context menu: