"For Doris von Drathen, aesthetic categories are inadequate for engaging the freedom of contemporary art." "This internationally esteemed art historian and critic uses an unconventional approach to break the strictures of existing systems and ask a simple question : if art represents one of our most precious means of seeing and understanding the world, then why do we accept formal and normative commentaries that abolish what is quintessential - the image itself and its emotional impact? In her monographic essays, Doris von Drathen has developed a new methodology that embraces the gaze of the beholder, examining an individual artist's practice as an intrinsic universe and respecting the art object as an entity of otherness."--BOOK JACKET.