Marlene Dumas, known as the woman who turns photos of porn stars and babies into expensive, sexy paintings, is talking about a YouTube video of Vladimir Nabokov. She had been looking for the source of a quote, “The primary function of art is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture,” and one link led to another, and there were Lionel Trilling and Nabokov agreeing that Lolita was about love, not sex. “Sex has become a cliché,” she says. “But love—you don’t have to live in [a police state] to know that loving someone is dangerous and tragic and wonderful.”