Contributed by Bill Arning / The human body, inhabited and depicted, is inherently interesting, complicated, and contradictory. I’d wager that almost everyone reading this review is doing so while embodied, despite the perverse desire of some to exist as purely visual intellects. Yet our historical moment seems to demand rapid and radical rewritings of these fleshy vessels. The New York Times recently reported that the widespread use of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs was transforming Provincetown’s annual gathering of bears – larger-bodied, hairy gay men. What had been a radical experiment in body positivity was running aground when weight loss became relatively effortless, for a price. Two decades ago, transgender and nonbinary identities occupied a comparatively quiet corner of queer culture. Today, gender nonconformity has become a favorite MAGA bludgeon, deployed to frighten suburban soccer moms. In successive exhibitions at the reliably bold New Discretions gallery, the current one titled “Bodyology,” master painter Clarity Haynes has depicted bodily realities in almost icy, glossy detail, on a scale where a single freckle can be the size of a human fist.
