Boardman’s portrait of President Trump, as well as her of other public figures, showcase the aesthetic challenges that so-called “conservative art” faces as the Trump administration influences the direction of the arts in America today.

To understand the challenges faced by art in contemporary America, we need to define “conservative art.” This type of art is not formally associated with President Trump or the Republican Party. Instead, it is a sentimental imitation of past art movements that lacks the substance of those movements while appealing to grievances about contemporary art. There is some overlap with or academic art, but it is more superficial and politically adjacent.

While I am skeptical of political prerogatives in the arts, political conservatives are finally taking the mantle of leadership in the visual arena. The Trump administration recently works of art and exhibitions at the Smithsonian that it found politically “objectionable.” It also instituted enormous against the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) that target art embodying progressive values. It is clear that the “woke” or progressive vision, as it manifests in the arts, is a target for elimination by the Trump administration.

What is less clear is what will replace that vision. There have been attempts by the Trump White House to promote a patriotic vision in the arts. The administration launched the, encouraging states to create cultural projects and develop grants that support patriotic themes in celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary. States such as New Jersey, Nevada and Mississippi are awarding hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants for projects that are fairly politically neutral, such as murals and other public displays focused on the American Revolution.

The conservative media organization launched a rather banal Founder’s Museum as part of the initiative in the Eisenhower Building in Washington, DC, featuring reproductions of historical paintings of the founders. In typical conservative fashion, the exhibition is not very original. It features no new paintings of the Founding Fathers. However, it does have visual AI displays that bring the founders to life to tell their stories — hardly the innovative spirit that has defined American creativity for generations.

“Conservative” art still misses the mark

Despite political conservatives’ distaste for progressive visual art that brings racial themes into stories about the colonial period and America’s founding, such works tend to display a level of imagination and complexity that “conservative art” almost never matches.

In 2022, African American artist sculptures of colonial slave women, cowrie shells and black female sphinxes adorned the interior of the US pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The colonial building that houses the US’ contribution to the biannual “art olympics” was decorated with a thatched roof to resemble a 1930s West African palace. In contrast, “conservative artists” would hardly ever create works of art this conceptually sophisticated.

The Trump administration has unfortunately fallen into the “conservative art” trap of rejecting newness in its arts policy. In January, President Trump signed an promoting traditional architecture while vehemently rejecting contemporary styles. This was accompanied by the allocation of millions in funding for a, which will feature lifelike statues of great Americans in traditional sculpture materials (including marble, bronze, copper, granite and brass).

Aside from this narrow exception and the adjacent architecture policy, political conservatives have failed to provide a conceptual vision for any visual arts policy beyond purging “improper ideology” from cultural institutions. This leaves a gaping vacuum for a coherent aesthetic sensibility to define the federal government’s vision for the visual arts, in other words, a “conservative” vision.

One organization that is almost perfectly designed to fill that vacuum is the Art Renewal Center (ARC). The is an ultra-conservative arts organization known for promoting “” in the fine arts as a rejection of modern and contemporary art. Founded by Fred Ross in 1999, the ARC positions itself as the guardian of the Western artistic tradition, championing a return to 19th-century French academic painting and valorizing its epitome, painter, over what Ross famously called the “.”

However, much of the art that the ARC promotes through its competitions and featured galleries demonstrates the fundamental flaws of “conservative art”. The ARC prizes an idealized and whimsical imitation of neoclassicism that is sterile and unimaginative, reminiscent of yearbook photos and cheesy “fan art.”

While most of their featured artists have superb technical skills — though a handful do not — the ARC takes something meant for a very specific context (art created during formulaic academic training) and insists that a formula meant for teaching should be applied to all art outside the academic setting. Instead of utilizing and building upon the tools of classical training, the ARC’s focus is stuck in this structure. Thus, it results in the promotion of forcefully constructed, highly centralized compositions that are difficult to relate to because they do not reflect the deep spaces and dynamic figures we interact with every day.

These defects, and the ARC’s smug sense of superiority about them, are precisely why the ARC was called the “” of the art world and why former partners of the ARC, like the, now reject them.

, founder of far-right publishing house Passage Press, identifies “conservative art’s” flaws as being overly moralistic, self-consciously sentimental and grievance-oriented. These shortcomings define the ARC’s preferences and precisely position the organization, as well as people who share its reactionary views, to take a significant place in the Trump administration as the government carves a path for a “conservative” revitalization of the arts.

The current direction is the wrong direction

President Trump has demonstrated some aesthetic discernment, such as in the Boardman portrait controversy. However, his tastes are still brash and unrefined. After the death of the notoriously sentimental painter Thomas Kinkade in 2012, he, “I happen to love his beautiful paintings”. Trump has also shown for the conservative propaganda artist, who creates flawlessly executed yet tacky paintings of conservative politicians and pundits that resemble political cartoons more than high art. This is not to mention the ornamental details across the White House that Trump had painted gold, and the decorative appliques that observers to polyurethane Home Depot decorations.

Among my friends and peers in the art world, there is skepticism about my concern that “Classical Realism” or a similar vision will overtake the visual arts through federal intervention — an intervention that thus far has been mostly punitive and lacking in creativity. However, my peers have a point. Progressives dominate the art world, and that is not going to change anytime soon just because President Trump is in the White House.

Instead, the impact of whatever style is promoted by the administration will be about establishing a kind of political legitimacy to the public. Conservative art will not only be legitimized, but the administration will also use this art to justify its policies through idealized imagery. For instance, the Department of Homeland Security posted a picture of Thomas Kinkade’s painting in early July, associating the Trump administration’s controversial immigration policies with an idealized and nostalgic Americana aesthetic.

The saccharine scene features misty morning rain, 1950s cars, a church steeple and an American flag to match. This is not to mention Kinkade’s characteristically high-chroma palette and crudely painted foliage. This exact aesthetic, which supposedly promotes the time-honored tradition of technical excellence while neglecting the very techniques that create subtlety and depth in the depiction of objects, is reflected in some of theless art the ARC promotes.

Classically trained artist and head of The Society of Figurative Arts in Texas,, is a long-time critic of the ARC. We spoke on the phone about “conservative art” and the current direction of the representational arts. Mentler and I shared our mutual surprise that the ARC has not been more involved with the administration’s arts policy despite its perfect fit for the moment, especially given its peripheral connections with the administration.

For example, will be launching copies of the ARC’s recent Salon winners’ paintings to the Moon. In addition, made multiple videos featuring an ARC member. Mentler thinks that the reason the ARC has not taken up this initiative is that the organization may be concerned about alienating the many liberals who associate with the ARC.

Regardless of the subject of conversation, Mentler always veered back toward discussing craft, composition and his encyclopedic knowledge of art history. His most insightful critique of the ARC’s sensibility was that they prize the “fine mimicking [of] surface detail” (an apt description of portraits) instead of valuing the structure of the figure and its placement in dynamic space (like Edward Hopper’s famous 1942 painting , which displays this dynamism). The term “surface detail” stuck out to me and is essentially what differentiates great art that celebrates tradition from kitsch art that reproduces a superficial imitation of the brilliance of great artists of the past.

The path forward lies in a substantive — not superficial — appreciation of the past

Impressionism, which the ARC considers to have some merit, is still seen as the beginning of the end of the heyday of classical values in the arts by Ross & Co. However, El Greco and the late work of great masters such as Jacobo Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Rembrandt van Rijn, Titian, Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, Eugène Delacroix and other titans often display qualities that are proto-impressionistic, suggesting that the modern sensibilities the ARC derides are actually artistically advanced.

Titian is perhaps the best-known Renaissance painter to have loosened up his style as he aged. His late painting, (1570s), and his final painting, (1576), show a stylistic development reminiscent of the arc of Western art history. His earlier work was cleaner: skin was smoother, brushstrokes were less visible and the edges of objects were harder. As he felt more comfortable in the stylistic and technical conventions of his time, he became looser in his paint and less conventional in his methods.

Western art had the same evolution when Modernism challenged the conventions of the French Academy by building on previous examples in art history, not by rejecting them, as Fred Ross erroneously.

Many political conservatives doubt the continued existence of a figurative tradition that embraces standards of excellence, which Mentler sees as the result of an insufficient study of art history. In my conversation with the notable conservative cultural commentator, she implied that such institutions are almost extinct. She suggested that Larry Kudlow’s wife’s painting atelier is among the only schools still teaching representational art. However, there are many schools, museums, galleries and self-taught artists that support the great artistic tradition of Western civilization — even if they do not make headlines or inflame the culture war.

One such institution is New York City’s Art Students’ League. The League offers courses in representational painting, drawing, sculpture and even abstract painting without denigrating or discouraging the stylistic flexibility that allows the arts to grow and change over time.

The League is not alone, with some art schools and apprenticeships remaining that offer similar skill-based instruction, as well as numerous ateliers that adhere to a more traditional approach. If conservatives are going to have an arts policy, they should replace their punitive war on wokeness with a propping up of the existing figurative tradition hiding right under their noses.

The combination of classical values and contemporary forms is not exclusive to institutions. An underappreciated figurative art movement called “” has adorned gallery walls with fragmented bodies, shifting faces and distorted spaces for decades. Great living figurative artists such as Jenny Saville, Alex Kanevsky, Phil Hale, as well as my close personal friends, paint in this movement. They are well-versed in art history, deeply admire the Renaissance and, like the great masters of the past, build on what their predecessors created instead of stagnating and merely copying styles popular at one specific time in history to “preserve” an art history tradition that, in reality, never stopped evolving.

Change defines the Western tradition

In modern society, we typically associate radical innovations with young start-up founders and inventors. In the pre-modern visual universe, radical innovation often belonged to the old who built on their experience. The imperfect and noncentral compositions that create narrative and movement exemplify the most sophisticated old master paintings.

The ARC demonstrates its own lack of sophistication by valorizing some of the least dynamic William-Adolphe Bouguereau paintings — paintings that himself said were composed under significant market pressure to conform to buyers’ tastes. Bouguereau’s, rich in saturated colors and dynamic figure poses, ironically shows stagnation over time in contrast with the growth typically associated with a decades-long career.

That same stagnation killed Boardman’s portrait of President Trump in the Colorado state Capitol. It may seem promising that the president was tantalized by the portrait that it. However, while the Vanessa Horabuena painting that replaced Boardman’s may have been more realistic, it still maintained the same kind of superficiality that holds back “conservative art”. Just as kitsch creates a superficial sense of enchantment, “conservative” political art creates a superficial sense of authority defined by the dishonesty of a generic image.

President presidential portrait by Gilbert Stuart is striking because its volumetric rendering creates a believable sense of dimensionality, complemented by soft, subtle brushwork. President Ronald portrait in the White House is warm, with bright colors and thick brushstrokes. President Barack commissioned Kehinde Wiley — who fuses the Western tradition with his own African-American culture — to bring together realistic portraiture with his unique floral backgrounds for his official portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. Yet, the newest portrait of President Trump by Vanessa Horabuena, which was merely more technically proficient than the previous one in the Colorado Capitol Building, is still empty. The painting is more of an imitation of the it was copied from than an authentic rendition of a president.

The difference between these past presidential portraits and the more recent ones of President Trump demonstrates what happens when the Western artistic tradition is embraced in its fullness — and when it is not. If political conservatives believe in the value of that tradition, they should accept the fact that the Western artistic tradition is not defined by stillness, but by a cascade of influence, with one period and movement after the other building on the last.

Furthermore, if political conservatives truly believe in their Western heritage, instead of using art as a political tool or disregarding its finer particularities, they should point their efforts toward supporting arts institutions that serve no explicit political purpose. Such a strategy would have a much more constructive impact on our culture, making today’s conservatives patrons of our heritage rather than saboteurs.

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I have been awestruck by the phenomenal reemergence of figurative art in New York’s hot gallery scene. America’s broad cultural shift — or “vibe shift,” as some in the media call it — has manifested in the arts as a rejection of cold, alienating, cynical and often conceptual art and an embrace of old methods, old masters and passionate narrative arcs. Frontini’s paintings and copper etching prints are a recent example of this impressive and long-overdue trend.

Frontini’s journey

Frontini, 24, is one of many artists who did not master painting until after art school. He taught himself to paint during the COVID lockdown by watching instructional videos by figurative artists , and . Many artists, including myself, feel disappointed by the incredibly low standards employed in most American art schools and the resulting degradation of the Western figurative tradition.

While Frontini did not learn to paint during art school because he majored in digital media, he still remarked on the low quality of his college’s fine arts program when we spoke.

The self-taught artist who overcomes the deficits of their college education is the hero of figure paint today. These champions push figure painting forward while keeping traditional methods and motifs alive, not because they are expected to, but because they sincerely want to.

While art schools mix reverence for the past with derision for our supposedly evil ancestors, Frontini obsessively embraces the techniques, discipline and beauty sought out by the great masters of art history without reservation. He is especially enamored with the dramatic, high-contrast lighting and highly refined but luscious paint strokes characteristic of the Baroque period.

If one were to zoom into specific sections of his paintings, one could imagine looking at something right out of the 17th century. However, a full view shows a use of bold colors and broad shapes more closely associated with Modernism.

Underneath the sheen and glisten on the surface of Frontini’s paintings shine stories that are both relatable and mysterious. His work is highly confessional of his personal narrative, which includes powerful feelings of despair, isolation, nostalgia and hopefulness. This level of vulnerability is characteristic of Gen Z’s emotional openness and the journey of self-discovery many 24-year-olds are on.

It is no surprise, given the emotional intensity of Frontini’s work, that one of his Baroque heroes is Caravaggio, who some think expressed his tumultuous inner life using the intense style and biblical motifs common in Baroque art. Nor is it unexpected that Frontini finds inspiration from the famously tortured Van Gogh, whose Starry Night inspired Frontini’s Soliloquy of a sleepless night.

Frontini’s magical wonderland universe

Frontini creates a magical wonderland universe that looks like the illustrations from great children’s books without whitewashing the uglier aspects of our preadult lives. Soliloquy was immediately emotionally impactful when I encountered it upon entering the gallery.

While it was initially unclear precisely what the painting was about, I felt sympathy for the sullen boy sitting alone near the center of the painting because of his depressed mood and the chaos that surrounded him. He reminded me of myself as a teenager.

When I read that the painting was about the “bitter trauma” associated with family breakdown, I began to cry because I come from a dysfunctional family. On a subconscious level, I had already known what the painting was about. Frontini later shared with me that he was a child of divorce.

Even though Frontini’s paintings are highly symbolic and illusionary — almost like M.C. Escher’s work — there is something literal about their symbolism. Perhaps that is why they are both perplexing and understandable. The image of the broken home is quite literal, with exploding houses in Soliloquy, figures bursting through walls in Ouverture, homes being carried like doll houses by giant humans in Contemperance Beyond Repetition and distorted, twisted walls throughout various other paintings.

Esoteric paintings

The most esoteric of Frontini’s paintings are Whimpering Whisper of Winter and Covalence. Covalence creates a sense that mystical knowledge is being revealed through beams of light, a broken pattern in a reflection and red spheres that float around two birds dueling at the bottom of the painting. The spheres (perhaps a reference to atoms given the title) are especially mystical, as though a little piece of magic from a Hilma af Klint painting were dropped into Frontini’s work.

The painting brings to mind the mystical experiences discussed by the psychologist William James in his seminal book The Varieties of Religious Experience. James describes ineffability and noesis as two of the four qualities associated with religious experiences. Is the painting about a deeply important connection, especially given the title? Is it about an ineffable experience of the revelation of mystical knowledge? Some paintings are not meant to be understood analytically or linguistically. They are meant to be felt and seen. Perhaps poetry can do them justice, but certainly not prose.

Less cosmic than Covalence, Whimpering touches on the earthly theme of winter. Toes are nuzzled between radiator fins as the brumal spirit enters the home like a gentle gust of wind. Many modern, secular humans have lost touch with life’s big, eternal themes, which include natural cycles like seasons.

Many Westerners hardly even feel a connection to the cyclical nature of reality at all, let alone think about our relationship with nature (outside of our social obligation to “recycle”) or personify its elements as our wise, ancient ancestors did. Something so intuitive for them has become so unnatural for us.

Clean up those edges!

The only negative thing I have to say is that some of Frontini’s edges could be cleaned up a little. As an old art teacher used to say during critique, “Clean up those edges!” I believe in clean edges when a painting is unframed. When a painting is not framed, the edges become the frame. They give the product a strong sense of completion and professional presentation.

Great art expresses something meaningful about life. Frontini’s psychedelic homescapes capture how truly formative our difficult childhood experiences are and how profoundly they shape us as adults. His journey of self-discovery and introspection reflects our experiences just as much as his, tapping into the tumults, tremors and transformations that surround our hardships.

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A striking close-up of a wintertime hunter dragging her kill in the snow was placed immediately at the exhibition entrance. The hunter’s bright orange vest and hat stood out against the less saturated green and blue planes in the background. This painting set the tone for the entire show, and was a solid choice to place at the entrance.

Harmony and whimsy

Reinecke’s painting style brings fine detail and simplicity into harmony. Broad areas of flat color are interrupted by linework that creates form, color and light simultaneously. You must see the show in person to truly experience this. It is impressive that she accomplished such divergent methods of mark-making so coherently. Uniting simplicity, complexity and disparate painting styles without falling into discordance is a theme throughout the show.

The whimsy of outdoor activities was on full display in nearly every painting. As was the magical feeling of nostalgia reinforced by designs, patterns and items from the 1970s. Special moments, like a child sitting in a plaid camping chair with sparks from a fire glowing around him, called to mind some of my most innocent childhood memories. These images phase into adolescence and tell a coming-of-age story as paintings of children doing childish things evolve into paintings of adolescents in more mature situations.

Hotter Than Warm. Used with permission from the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery.

One painting, the dynamic Meet in the Kitchen, was set entirely indoors. It shows the crowded interior of a ranch-style cabin with brass ducks above the fireplace to match. In the open-concept kitchen, people gathered to whisper secrets and share intimate moments. The most theatrical painting in Pines, it also teeters on the edge of disharmony (unlike the other paintings) due to an array of clashing garish patterns characteristic of the 1970s mantra, “more is more.” Yet, the painting succeeds because Reinecke leans into eclecticism and pairs electric patterns with a dynamic social scene and an almost cavernous space.

Meet In The Kitchen. Used with permission from the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery.

Some works were unrefined

The only thing lacking in Reinecke’s charming paintings was a sense of finish and refinement in small areas of several works. In two paintings, the trees in the background were not painted in the same style or with the same level of detail as the rest of her paintings. These left me wanting a little more to feel the paintings were “complete.”

A tiny area of background between two kissing lips stuck out for its white color, different from the rest of the background. Similarly, some small background figures could have benefited from more definition. This may seem nitpicky, but these small areas deserve to be brought up to the same level of resolve and quality as the result of her work so they do not distract from what Reinecke’s paintings get right.

Reinecke: master of the visual story

Let me be clear: Reinecke’s paintings get a lot right.

For instance, Offset Hook and the titular In The Pines demonstrate a superior understanding of how to make light and shadow superbly beautiful while subtle — almost translucent. Pines in particular helps to tell a story across the various paintings. It breaks from the theme of innocence with images of female nudity, creating a sense that the characters in the paintings grow and change over the years across their outdoor odysseys. The mysteriousness of The Collector’s House, featuring two children on bikes at night up to who knows what, is only accentuated by the beaming light from a headlamp as its particles wave through fog and mist. Reinecke is truly a master of the visual story.

Offset Hook. Used with permission from the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery.

In The Pines. Used with permission from the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery.

The Collector’s House. Used with permission from the artist and Monya Rowe Gallery.

In The Pines is worth the trip to Midtown. It will bring you back to your childhood trips to national parks, summer camp, fishing with dad and general mischief-making. The memories Reinecke’s paintings evoke are colored with both bright and muted hues, reminding us of when life was simple, time seemed endless and magic was behind every tree and under every rock found in a river bed.

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Despite his status as a kind of celebrity among living figure painters, I always felt that something was wrong with his art. Photos of his work often look cold and jagged, and his figures are disquieting and uncomfortable to look at. It is not that I ever disliked Kanevsky’s paintings; in fact, quite the opposite. I always enjoyed them, especially the buttery appearance of some of his kitchen still lifes.

However, upon getting a closer look at his work, I realized I had completely missed small details that make his paintings soft and pleasant. Photos simply do not do his paintings justice. Even high-quality photographs of his work do not capture the colors, textures, brushstrokes and physicality of his paint. These qualities bring life to images that look hard and robotic in photos.

The limits of photographs

Some of Kanevsky’s work, especially his still life paintings, are not disrupted by random shapes, scenes from another setting sharply interposed into the space or other white noise. These paintings are more solid and blocky, reminding me of the British painter Euan Uglow, who constructed his paintings more tightly than Kanevsky.

Before seeing Kanevsky’s work in person, I had associated him more closely with Uglow. The softness of his paintings never fully came through in photographs. The most unsettling aspect of my previous photo-mediated perception of Kanevsky was the vector-like way he seemed to paint skin — it felt uncomfortable but reminded me of Uglow’s figures. However, in person, I discovered granular details, fine brushwork and delicate transitions between shapes in the skin of his models. These were details I hadn’t noticed before.

Photography gave many artists and art lovers the unprecedented ability to view great art at home through art books and, later, the Internet. Unlimited access to the medium is one of the great luxuries of modern life. However, this access took us away from the experience of viewing art with our own eyes. Is it really a good thing that we have a different experience at home than at a gallery or museum where we can see the work before us? How do we even know what we are missing? Do viewers of art books and scrollers of art accounts on social media ever feel compelled to go out to see art in person?

Betty Cunningham Gallery recently opened the online show, , which showcases artist Jake Berthot’s drawings and paintings. The show’s online nature highlights the drawbacks of digital viewing. The exhibition is underwhelming because of the small size and low quality of the images. This does a disservice to these mysterious artworks. Fortunately, photos of Berthot’s work that are much higher-quality can be found elsewhere on the Internet, and of course, in-person viewing would be more captivating. I hope the deficiencies of online exhibitions are enough to make them hangovers of the post-Covid-19 era.

The case for viewing art in person

In our post-Covid-19 world, our soft skills remain rusty and our individual online media experiences envelope us. So, a benefit of going out to galleries and museums is the in-person experience so many of us are missing. One of the greatest pleasures of visiting a gallery is meeting the artists.

I met Kanevsky. Speaking with him was an absolute pleasure. He displayed humility and humor (made more enjoyable by his Russian accent) about his place in art history and the admiration he receives from many figure painting students. Unsurprisingly, he does not work from photographs.

I also ran into a former professor and New York art critic at the show. My opinion of Kanevsky’s art was changing right before my eyes as I absorbed new visual data; I had to share my insights with this critic. He believed that the flourishes, decorations and ornamentation that fundamentally changed my view of Kanevsky’s paintings were the primary problem with his work. He thought these elements were like a cheap garnish that decorated the paintings.

This disagreement is a matter of taste, clearly. I found these embellishments attractive, tasteful and sophisticated. I would have never come to this conclusion if I had not shown up in person and engaged in the tradition of “close looking” at Kanevsky’s work.

Viewing art is a communal experience

We humans are unique in our desire to reflect life in images. Like nearly all our activities, viewing art is more pleasurable when it is a communal experience. The stunning mosques, cathedrals and other temples that dot the Earth are spaces where communities gather; something that unites them is that they are adorned with beautiful images, ornaments and calligraphy.

I am not arguing that galleries and museums are secular temples. However, imagine the intimacy people would miss if they merely sat alone to look at photos of breathtaking spaces, such as Notre Dame or St. Peter’s Basilica, instead of visiting them in person. Kanevsky’s paintings, like all sacred spaces and great art, demand physical presence to achieve a desired aesthetic effect that photographs cannot provide.

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Gray’s paintings immediately struck me as amateurish and unpolished, marked by many technical errors. Her understanding of figure painting and facial anatomy appears limited. As a result, I was distracted by the ugliness produced by her crude brushwork and misshapen ears and noses.

One might argue, “What if that was her intention?” I highly doubt her aim was to produce paintings that resemble those of a poorly-trained art school sophomore. There is a distinct difference between intentional departures from naturalistic depictions and mistakes. After thoroughly examining her work, I concluded these were errors rather than stylistic choices. She was probably trying to accomplish technical feats she did not understand how to execute.

However, after reviewing Gray’s work on her and , I considered that her style might indeed be a deliberate, albeit tasteless, choice. Her older works show figures that intentionally deviate from naturalism, reminiscent of some of David Hockney’s work. Yet in her recent work, these departures appear to be — and probably are — mistakes.

Auxier Kline: Maybe, Let’s Just Be Friends

Tin Nguyen knows what to do with paint. His at Auxier Kline impresses not just because of his technical mastery but because his work feels essentially free of “mistakes.” All galleries should aspire to this level of refinement in their exhibitors, a standard Auxier Kline consistently meets.

Nguyen’s paintings captivate with two striking qualities: their lusciousness and sensuousness. His brushstrokes have a distinct form and texture that’s immensely satisfying, paired with an exquisite grasp of color theory evident in the pieces of light and shadow that make up objects, fabrics and skin. These colors and forms interact, creating a mood that engenders pleasurable sensations in the viewer’s mind.

Like many prominent figure painters today, Nguyen’s work is “queer.” Some of his paintings show intimate, sexually suggestive images of men’s crotches (tastefully covered). The queer aspects feel incidental rather than central, appearing in only a few works. The influence of the great American abstract realists of the 20th century, Richard Diebenkorn and Fairfield Porter, is much more pronounced than any political or identity concerns.

At a different time, such sexual imagery would have been radical, brave or liberating. Today, queer art denotes a certain social status among the intellectual and artistic elite — a group sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi “symbolic capitalists.” Nguyen participated in another recent Auxier Kline show titled, “.” The show was meant to explore “queer identity in nature.” In that exhibit, his work again read as incidentally queer, with a gay man merely in a painting or having made a painting that was not discernibly queer in any other way.

I doubt that, when we look back on this period’s great queer figurative art, it will be remembered for the sake of its queerness.

Stephen Friedman Gallery: The letters of this alphabet were trees

Sky Glabush’s immense paintings at are magical. The radiant suns in many of his pieces cast cosmic, psychedelic rays over oceans and through forests. His largest works are truly mammoth, perhaps the biggest I’ve seen recently.

Glabush achieves a unique texture by mixing sand into his paint, complementing the intensity of his colors. The texture almost looks like concrete, yet it only serves to soften the paintings, making them look more playful and inviting.

His outdoor scenes evoke the wonder a child feels exploring the woods, an impression especially pronounced in one of his darker forest interiors. I was unsurprised to learn the show’s title refers to a Seamus Heaney poem called, “,” in which a child learns the alphabet from tree branches. Glabush masterfully conveys this feeling without using words or overt narrative symbols.

It’s no wonder Glabush draws from like Kirchner, Munch and Kupka, masters at evoking emotion through form and color. Rather than imparting ideas, these artists aimed to provide viewers with mystical, ineffable and emotional experiences — experiences Glabush provides to his viewers upon first glance.

Almine Rech: Between dogs and wolves

Almine Rech gallery, the location of Alexandre Lenoir’s massive , is in an impressive stretch of galleries across several Lower Manhattan blocks. The gallery space is open, with high ceilings and light pouring in.

The paintings, which appear ordinary online, are, in fact, made with painted tape on canvas. When I approached them, I was shocked because I had expected a flat surface. Instead, the surface of some of his paintings looked like a piñata. While I don’t think this detracts from his work, I’d have been equally impressed if they were simply painted on flat canvas.

The colors in his huge paintings are phenomenal and surprisingly original, given we live in an era when nearly everything has been done in painting. Some of his paintings look like inverted color photographs or heat maps of landscapes and interiors. This produces bold, rich, complementary colors. Less saturated analogous colors surround them, creating a subtle composition.

The gallery’s description of Lenoir’s work was overly philosophical. Instead of discussing the art’s appearance, the description offered a new (and unnecessary) concept to explain how Lenoir’s use of gallery assistants to complete his paintings is actually a revolutionary conceptual innovation. By not making the work himself, his paintings become “metaphysical.”

Some nods are given to the colors in his paintings, but little effort is put into explaining why those colors are interesting. However, I will grant credence to the lengthy explanation of his process because, without it, his paintings would probably look somewhat different.

Nicodim Gallery: Prophecy of the End

Samantha Joy Groff’s are dominated by red and blue atmospheres. Young rural women in revealing tops and cut-off jeans contort their bodies in dramatic forest scenes, embodying narratives inspired by the Bible’s tragic imagery. These pieces capture the turbulence of the women’s inner lives.

Groff’s work feels both timeless and timely. In an era when the concerns of conservative working-class white men have more sympathy, the artist turns the attention of those concerns to the wives, daughters and sisters of those men. The struggles associated with social decay, the crisis of addiction and the epidemic of loneliness so often seen as male issues are depicted in highly theatrical terms by women in the same social and economic class as men who are so often the subject of pity.

It is fitting that Groff uses religious themes to portray the struggles of rural white communities; after all, they overwhelmingly hold deep religious convictions. By using stories of possession and armageddon, she explores existential struggles as these women literally cling to each other amid myriad crises that only ancient religious narratives and mythical concepts can truly represent. Fentanyl Jesus, as commented by the critic Francesca Anton, depicts this possession as the “chokehold” that “these women are wrestling” with.

Christian narratives make sense to graft onto the personal upheaval many Americans live with today. When I reflect on Groff’s paintings, I think of William Blake’s illustrations of the Book of Job, a story that teaches us about the universality and inevitability of tragedy. Even if the exact losses Job suffers are not the same as ours, we relate to him because we know that we, too, will someday encounter catastrophe, pain, grief and loss.

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The victory cry, “The figure is dead!” became a common saying. This was a misunderstanding of art history. Today, the figure is alive and well, dominating two of the biggest New York art fairs of the year and top galleries in North America’s art capital.

The Armory Show

This year marked the 30th anniversary of. Originally held in a Manhattan hotel where art was displayed on beds, the fair now takes place at the expansive Jacob Javits Convention Center in Hudson Yards and features 235 exhibitors.

I did not care as much for the arrangement of the show as I did last year because the layout was less engaging. In 2023, entering the show was a dramatic experience, with striking figure paintings immediately capturing my attention. I was swept up in the excitement, discovering compelling art at every turn.

This year, however, that initial impact was lacking. I was met with a less striking entrance, with my focus falling on the side of one of the gallery walls — hardly a great piece of art. The overall quality of the work was more inconsistent than last year. I searched for stellar art, weaving through unoriginal abstract paintings and dull minimalist wall art to find something beautiful.

There was a plethora of absolutely incredible work among the weeds. Large figure painting dominated The Armory Show. I was drawn to the stories they told, the technical excellence and ambition they exhibited and the innovative uses of color they displayed.

‘s large figure paintings particularly impressed me. Unfortunately, his work was placed in a less prominent spot, but his paintings, which straddle the line between realism and exaggeration, were compelling enough to be noticed anyway. His nudes were captivating with their contorted and fluid bodies and striking use of color, particularly rich purples.

Another stand-out artist was. Edvard Munch himself could have painted his giant landscapes. He was a classmate and close friend of the great Scottish figure painter, an artist so influential in contemporary figure painting he should be a household name like the avant-garde painters who influence him.

In the late 1990s, Childish helped found, an international art movement that favors figure painting and spirituality in art in opposition to conceptual art and the postmodern deconstruction of meaning and beauty. Clearly, the Stuckists are winning, and soon, they may announce their own victory cry, “The figure is alive!”

SPRING/BREAK

Set up as an alternative to The Armory Show, the is held on one floor of an office building, with each office its own exhibit. Mostly large figure paintings, the work displayed at SPRING/BREAK was more consistent in subject matter and quality than The Armory Show. Work that deviated from this pattern was relegated to a different section of the show, creating a sense of order Armory lacked.

The exhibiting artists were generally younger and less established, though not inferior to those at Armory. The show showcased an array of beautiful nudes, narrative scenes and figure paintings, reflecting the resurgence of figurative art.

I was most struck by the desire of artists in SPRING/BREAK to tell stories with their figure paintings. As the era of conceptual art’s domination ends, it warrants considering why. After decades of detached and alienating art, people want paintings they can relate to, paintings that reflect life, much like how novels and music create joy, contemplation or curiosity about what it means to be a human being.

GRIMM Gallery

Following SPRING/BREAK, I went to GRIMM Gallery to see Fool’s errand and Tell Me How It Ends. Excitingly, I met Laurent Proux at the opening.

Cudahy, an alumnus of Pratt Institute and Hunter College, is a rock star in contemporary painting. His large paintings are red, green and figurative, celebrating moments of everyday life. They are sensitive and evoke a sense of memory, with relatively normal and intimate moments memorialized on giant canvases.

Cudahy’s paintings show intimate – but not sexually graphic – scenes of gay men at various stages of hookup encounters. I do not care that Cudhay’s work is “queer” for the same reason I do not care that the great living figure painter paintings are “queer.” Paintings of heterosexuality would be equally valid so long as they were excellent. Nor do I care that many of the great figure paintings by living African-American artists are “identity” art. I care that they are beautiful and engaging.

Martinez’s show was in the basement. It belonged there. His paintings were unambitious and underwhelming, especially compared with Cudahy’s work.

Enchanted Gardens

My evening concluded with a visit to IRL Gallery’s, featuring works by Anna Ruth, Clara Gesang-Gottowt, Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov and Megan Rea. The paintings, whether still life, figurative, abstract or of animals, were smaller and more subdued than those in the earlier shows, fitting for the tiny Chinatown (technically Two Bridges) gallery.

Their ethereal nature created a dreamlike quality, evoking a soft emotional response. It was an ineffable feeling, difficult to describe because of its mysteriousness. Sensuous textures, either from the texture of the canvas due to thinly applied paint or the application of thicker paint on top of thinner paint, enhanced this feeling.

Developing Desire

I capped off the blockbuster weekend with the opening of Amanda Ba’s at Jeffery Deitch Gallery in Manhattan the following evening.

Her monumental figure paintings, including one so large it was made up of multiple panels supported by wooden beams from behind, punctuated a weekend that demonstrated the prominence of figurative art in contemporary art history. While I found her paintings somewhat unnerving, they were impressive.

Ba’s paintings feature colossal Chinese women who appear to be based on herself. They inhabit cities in various states of decay and live in a grotesque, hazy atmosphere. One particularly striking piece shows a giant figure viewed from above, standing completely naked, encircled by a highway, smiling creepily. Her eerie appearance is reminiscent of one of the human-eating giants from Attack on Titan.

This whirlwind of exhibitions reaffirmed my belief that figurative painting is poised to lead the next era of art history. After decades of postmodernism’s dominance, art lovers and artists alike are eager for beauty and narratives over pessimism and confusion. People are ready for a return to our cultural foundations. In the fine arts, this means a resurgence of figure painting — not in the rigid, reactionary sense promoted by organizations like the, but in the tradition of Western artists who have continually built on our artistic legacy to create something new.

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On display in the four Westbeth gallery rooms were dozens of works by 52 artists on canvas and paper, some ceramic and metal sculptures and various multimedia pieces made from an array of materials like felt, newspaper, plastic and metal. Some 3D works were mounted on the wall or the columns in the middle of the gallery space.

Most of the work was mediocre, something one might see in the living room of someone who wrongly thinks they have good taste — or a doctor’s office that needed to replace its faded Monet prints.

Attempted formalism is not an excuse for lazy art

The legacy of modernism was clear from the work on display. Nearly none of the pieces told stories. Instead, most of them were formalistic. That is, they emphasized the formal qualities of the work: its shapes, colors, textures, size, how those elements interact with one another and the sensations that their appearance produces in the viewer. At least, that is the idea.

The large, blocky and colorful shapes in many of the pieces reminded me of a McDonald’s PlayPlace or the toys and decorations in a kindergarten classroom, especially the human-sized white minimalist sculpture made of either wood or plastic that combined the outline of a house, a white picket fence and a tree.

Indeed, the show was characterized by a playful, childlike quality — like an adult version of arts and crafts. Much of the work lacked a sense of seriousness. However, this was a strength for some pieces, like ’s, that looked like fabric versions of ’s paintings. These pieces were large enough to grab my attention and pleasant to look at because of the contrast between colors, saturation and shape size.

Still, much of the work was underwhelming and amateurish. Many pieces relied too heavily on the assumption that warm pastel colors, saturation and formal simplicity would make them inherently interesting. Light red and pink colors dominated a wall of small works on paper and canvas, which was boring due to a lack of contrast.

The overcrowded nature of the show did not help either. Many of the 2D pieces were presented salon-style. Drawings and paintings with similar color palettes and saturation levels were stacked on top of one another and placed too close together horizontally. This presentation did not give the pieces space to breathe, and works that were too similar were placed too close together.

The fair was generally apolitical except for two collages of Biden’s infamous “,” Vice President Kamala Harris and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The collages beamed with the same dull “art a mom would make on a Sunday” energy as much of the other work at the fair.

Groux, Rodríguez and Fitzgerald were flowers among the weeds

I was more impressed by the 3D works than the smaller paintings and drawings. ’s ceramic sculptures were genuinely interesting. Many small organic shapes came together to form visually complex sculptures about the size of a human head. Three were on pedestals justifiably placed in the center of the gallery that featured the most 3D work.

I also enjoyed ’s sculptures. They hung in the same room as the ceramics. My favorite one was small but stimulating to the eye because of the combination of negative space, contrasting saturated colors, shadows and dark, flat triangles and squares.

The most impressive piece, correctly placed in the front, was ’s polyptych that comprised four tondos (circular paintings). The largest had a diameter of about four or five feet. Before contemplation, the paintings appeared like colorful clouds. Further examination revealed something like a bird’s eye view of opened clamshells with a shiny pearl in each.

Matters of taste in New York galleries have been democratized oddly. Graduates of New York’s finest art schools — those with a finer aesthetic sensibility — have difficulty entering the art market. The low-level galleries that once gave them a clear career path now dwindle. Yet, uninteresting amateur art seems to get into an increasing number of galleries instead of being kept out by curators.

Quality work will always filter through and will always stand out to gallery attendees. Perhaps this is a strength of the system. If a painting is splendid, dynamic or sublime, even a person who lacks the refined taste provided by art education will find that mediocrity starkly contrasts with quality when the two are placed side by side. Unfortunately, almost none of the work at the fair stood out strongly enough to create such a distinction.

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The harassment, career implosions and threats of physical violence some face for objecting to left-wing gender ideology make honest conversations around this subject nearly impossible. We need to cut through the dishonesty and sophistry about gender that academia, medicine and media produce. Why? Because common falsehoods about complex social issues lead to further political polarization — and in this instance, harm children. Honest science-based conversations around this issue will result in superior healthcare for gender-distressed youths.

Ideological capture

Over the last decade, hyper-progressive identity politics large portions of the arts, humanities, journalism, education, social sciences and, to some extent, biology, medicine and government agencies. No “woke” issue prompts more self-censorship than the orthodoxy around transgender issues.

The eloquent American commenter Sam Harris coined the “uniquely combustible” to describe the sensitivity Islam holds toward criticism. In Western culture, the transgender community is also “uniquely combustible” when faced with criticism, especially concerning transgender healthcare practices for children.

I am not arguing that every single transgender person is incapable of engaging in discourse. I am arguing that there is a small sect of radical activists who are not representative of the transgender population, just as jihadists are not representative of Muslims. This sect disrupts science, medicine and civil discourse, often to the chagrin of many transgender people.

An aggressive cancel culture surrounds the topic of gender. Various case examples and further evidence illustrate this. Activist harassment forces doctors, scientists and journalists into a pattern of self-censorship because they do not want to share the unfortunate fates of the dissenters they see around them.

DEI’s effect on universities

The massive left-wing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) industrial complex that permeates universities has its tentacles in everything: hiring, lectures, , departmental culture, disciplinary procedures and propaganda dissemination. DEI ideology holds that “marginalized” racial and sexual groups are “hurt” by violations of politically correct etiquette. It often targets people who violate its dogma for reputation damage, career destruction and frivolous “bias” .

In his recent , The Canceling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, estimated that roughly 100,000 college professors were punished for constitutionally protected speech over the last decade. In fact, faculty are more likely to self-censor than during the McCarthy Era.

A prominent of cancellation is that of Dr. Lisa Littman, a former professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. In 2018, she coined the term “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” to explain the sudden rise in youths identifying as transgender. Her research was widely criticized at the time of its publication for relying on testimony from parents who were posting on “anti-trans” websites and for positing that the increase may be the result of social contagion.

The publishing journal PLOS One reviewed her work and it after the controversy, finding that it only contained tiny errors that had no impact on the conclusion. Regardless, Littman lost her consulting job and no longer teaches at the university.

The term “anti-trans” confuses scientific discourse. It is so overused it essentially loses all meaning. Legitimate and scientifically informed points of view are contorted and misrepresented to make doctors and scientists look like hatemongers.

The website labels any person who rejects hardline gender ideology, including transgender people, as enemies of the transgender population. The American Academy of Pediatrics even those asking for systematic review of the evidence for gender-affirming care as “anti-transgender.”

Another of cancellation is that of Dr. Carole Hooven, a former Harvard biologist, hormone expert and celebrated professor from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She insisted that human sex differences are dimorphic while she simultaneously emphasized her respect for preferred pronouns. For dissenting, she lost almost all professional support at Harvard, pushing her into early retirement. She described a “fear that spreads every time someone is punished for their speech” on college campuses.

That fear directly undermines the foundation of liberal epistemic culture. “Epistemic” is a Greek word for “how we come to knowledge.” Free speech is a vital part of this process. But having it on paper is not enough. Ideas must be aired out in the open, rigorously challenged and refined to make them more accurate.

People do not want to air out difficult ideas when fear of a cancellation firestorm hangs over them. DEI apparatchiks support this fear through -like reporting services, campus-wide emails, and posters reminding university members what words to use and how to use them — even if scientists disagree. This creates an environment of silence.

There is something Soviet about this culture. Those loyal to the Party in the USSR often punishing dissidents into their own hands. Today, formal punishments do occur, but in other instances, they do not involve formal procedures. Instead, they embrace communist-styled social ostracization and reputation destruction, pushing non-conformists to leave institutions.

Medical discourse suffocates

In science and medicine, a radical ideology that tried to reshape human beings was dominant for decades. It was called . in 1883, the theory sought to improve human genetic quality, often through selective human breeding and forced sterilization. To not support the ideology could have been a career death sentence for doctors and scientists. The current left-wing ideology holds many similarities to eugenics dogma, especially the expectation of conformity to its tenets and the idea that human beings can be remade.

One of the central tenets of today’s dogma is (GAC). GAC holds that doctors and therapists should affirm a child’s self-described inner sense of gender. They should provide measures like puberty blockers and hormones to align one’s inner sense of gender with the outer biological sex. Major medical organizations in the , , continue to support GAC, despite their British and European ’ move toward a model that embraces psychotherapy and questioning gender identity.

In 2021, Zander Keig, a transsexual social worker and member of the World Professional Organization for Transgender Health (WPATH), released a criticizing WPATH’s new standards of care for youth medical transition. He objected to the group’s removal of the evidence and ethics sections. Again, activists and ideology got in the way. The letter collected roughly 1,700 signatures before Keig closed it; activists were sabotaging it with fake signatures.

Social media platforms also traffic in this confusion. The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing suicides among members of the LGBTQ+ community, placed a disclaimer on a YouTube discussing the gender exploratory therapy model for gender-distressed youths. The group labeled the practice as “conversion therapy” because the model does not immediately affirm a minor’s self-perceived gender identity. This is despite advocates of the practice painstakingly explaining that the exploratory model does not push patients away from or toward any gender identity.

In 2023, a therapist writing under the pen name posted a well-informed, fact-based essay on Substack about why the exploratory therapy model for transgender youths is legal in California. While she listed professional reasons for remaining anonymous, one of them was to avoid social consternation: “I would rather not be harassed by activists.”

In April 2024, Dr. Hilary Cass, a highly respected pediatrician-scientist from England, released an “Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People,” more commonly known as the . The Review found poor evidence to support youth transition, so the doctor recommended a halt to the practice.

The Cass Review also supported the exploratory therapy model over the immediate affirmation of gender identity, more high-quality research, the admonition of healthcare providers who provide gender-affirming care without parental consent, an insistence that transitioning is not right for everyone who wants it and condemnation of toxic cancel culture. Cass also argued that social influence and social media are partly responsible for the increase in the transgender youth population.

Unlike Sedosa, Cass could not maintain her anonymity. Predictably, she violent threats. Local police warned her not to use public transportation following the publication of her review. There is a clear pattern here.

One of the more horrendous examples of this pattern is the mistreatment of Dr. Eithan Haim, a surgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas. He blew the whistle on the hospital’s secret continuation of transgender medical procedures for children after the hospital declared it had ceased those practices.

The Department of Justice accuses Haim of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal law that protects patients’ health information from being given without their consent. A thorough examination of the accusations against Haim done by finds that these are ginned-up charges that would never be applied to a similar whistleblower if the issue were not about transgender children. Haim up to a decade in prison and $250,000 dollars in fines. This ongoing case will certainly produce a chilling effect among doctors who want to speak out.

Confusion in journalism

The public relies on the media to provide succinct explanations of complex subjects they may not have the time to investigate or the expertise to understand. Outlets on the left and right have made a fetish out of covering anything and everything transgender, often in a polarizing, simplistic and highly politicized manner.

In 2017, Katie Herzog, a journalist from Portland, Oregon, attempted to report on the issue thoughtfully. Her compassionate and balanced , “The Detransitioners: They Were Transgender, Until They Weren’t,” earned her extensive harassment and social ostracization. She eventually “in part because of the turmoil.”

Abigail Shirier, author of the 2020 , Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, received backlash for supporting the social contagion hypothesis. Chase Strangio, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, , “stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”

When free-thinking journalists are mistreated and discredited, that leaves an opening for the most ideologically driven. Ali Velishi, host of MSNBC’s Velishi show, a study that found a 73% reduction in suicidality among transgender-identifying youths who received GAC. He also presented the fact that major American medical organizations support GAC.

It is common for the media to refer to the opinions of major medical organizations to justify arguments. However, American medical organizations are getting this issue wrong. This is evidenced by European medical organizations’ lack of support for GAC, the recent of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons from supporting these procedures and an astounding lack of evidence — something these organizations refuse to contend with.

The research is also presented out of context. It compares a population with an enormous mental illness comorbidity rate, transgender youths, to the cisgender population. When with other equally depressed and anxious populations, the rates of suicidality are similar. The study also does not determine what part of GAC reduced suicidality; it could have been therapy that made the difference rather than chemical interventions.

A vital piece of context is often left out of the conversation around transgender youth healthcare. The limited body of research that does exist does not apply to most of the current population of gender-distressed young people. The in youths self-identifying as transgender has different symptoms than those observed in the “ ,” which is the most thorough GAC research. In fact, scientists who performed the Dutch Studies against “blindly adopting our research.”

Another example of irrational coverage of this issue was an ABC published in 2023, titled, “‘Genocidal’: Transgender people begin to flee states with anti-LGBTQ laws.” Elsa, a seven-year-old male child from Texas, identifies as female. His parents describe him as “wise beyond her years,” having “guided [them] through her gender journey.” His gender journey began at age three. On National Daughter’s Day, he asked, “Can I be your daughter?” Today’s parents tend to overindulge their children.

At the time of the article’s publication, Texas had recently planned to make GAC illegal. When the child’s family discussed moving states to give him GAC care when he was older, he said, “Just let them hurt me.”

The child’s belief that officers of the state will commit an act of violence against him and that that is preferable to moving demonstrates that — like all children — he is not wise beyond his years. He is not ready to make such significant life-altering choices.

Fortunately, The New York Times demonstrates that we may be turning a corner regarding public discourse around transgender issues. It published fact-based opinion pieces this year about the Cass Review that contradicted one another, something nearly impossible several years ago.

NYT writer Pamela Paul’s on the Review questions why America is “still pretending” GAC works. She echoes many of the criticisms highlighted in this article and dispells the myth that transgender children will commit suicide if they do not receive GAC. Fellow writer David Brooks Cass “the kind of hero the world needs today.” He argues that her courage to explore this issue was complimented by a sense of uncertainty in her review. Cass did not make definitive claims without evidence, unlike many in the trenches of the LGBTQ+ culture war.

Meanwhile, NYT journalist Lydia Polgreen’s well-informed , “The Strange Report Fueling the War on Trans Kids,” criticized the Cass Review for understandable methodological reasons. However, a deeper look finds that Polgreen takes issue with Cass’s opinion that moving minors down the transgender pathway is not right for everyone who identifies as queer. Polgreen likens denying minors hormones and puberty blockers to denying the sexuality of a homosexual and as “a wish for a child not to be queer.”

This is very different from homosexuality and is not what Cass thinks. She believes children should not undergo years of invasive medical procedures unless they are absolutely necessary. It is not a denial of their queerness. Further, homosexuality does not require years of medical interventions and it is not associated with a mental illness like gender dysphoria.

The extreme discourse and polarization around transgenderism and children is a symptom of a larger ongoing social crisis in Western society. The means by which we come to knowledge is now dysfunctional. Openly discussing contentious issues is a necessary part of repairing that dysfunction, reversing the capture of institutions by ideology and ending the hold that cancel culture has on intellectual life and scientific discourse. Holding a nuanced dialogue on this issue brings us closer to scientific and medical truths about gender that will benefit gender-distressed youths.

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