SOURCE: Rubin, Merle. “The True Nature of Art and the Audience It Needs.” Christian Science Monitor (26 February 1996): 17.

In the following positive review, Rubin evaluates the strengths of Art Objects.

At a time when so many voices have been raised to proclaim or lament the impending death of art in a world that seems increasingly hostile—or at best indifferent—to its power, Jeanette Winterson's Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery is a resounding declaration of faith in the living spirit of what Shelley called “Poetry” (meaning all of the creative arts).

In these 10 essays, Winterson, the author of five ambitious novels, follows in the path of Shelley's “Defence of Poetry” by offering her own eloquent and timely vindication of art in an age of trivialization. Her argument is based on the premise that art is autonomous, offering what can be found nowhere else, and certainly not to...