Today, there is really no urgency to reflect on Jon McNaughton’s body of work. Adam Lehrer’s recent article in Compact, “The Limits of MAGA Art,'' stakes this out clearly. There is much less danger to endorsing McNaughton in the midst of a failing Biden presidency than there was at the height of anti-Trump hysteria . . . Why address it at all then?

“I grew up very much alone, and as far back as I recall I was frightened of anything sexual.”

What’s objectionable for Lehrer is that the products of the culture industry transmit a comfortable (numbing) attitude towards reality as opposed to an “ambiguous” or “critical” one, which art formerly laid claim to.

The art that casts a critical eye towards our society in its totality, or even just employs ambiguity to inspire criticality in its viewers, is met with skepticism, if not hostility.