Steiner’s discussion meanders some-what, being held together more by her interest in close explication of various works of art than by a systematic development of her thesis, but it yields insight and flashes of clarity. For example, through her eyes we can better understand one of the paradoxes of 20th-century art—how, for example, the dung-studded Madonnas and the urine-soaked crucifixes and the sadomasochistic photographs can claim to be liberating us from limitations, yet in actuality be dehumanizing and desolating. The reason is that, in modern art, freedom has been specifically defined as antithetical to the common affections.
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