Pat Steir

The painter and printmaker Pat Steir is a draftswoman of letters, signs and symbolic marks, drips and spills. Her pictorial universe has been divided by critics into many different styles, epochs and categories. In this monograph, the German art historian Doris von Drathen, currently a Professor at Cornell University, detects a consistent project throughout Steir's painting oeuvre, rich and diversified as it is: for von Drathen the paintings are linked by a persistent philosophical investigation into "what is and what you think is," relentlessly analyzing the philosophical illusion of reality and its perception.