ABSTRACT
In 1933, at the young age of 19, Saul Steinberg left his native Bucharest to study archi-tecture in Milan. Years passed, he ultimately settled in New York City and became an accomplished artist. Steinberg describes an ailment familiar to many. Once installed, this unusual condition surreptitiously takes over one’s soul and never goes away. As one learns to live with it, the pain sometimes grows more intense, while other times stays dormant, but remains present, unmistakably there. Regret and anger, love and pain, nostalgia and wrath—Steinberg experiences the strange symptoms of a disease bearing the Romanian name dor. Explored mainly in literary studies and philosophy, but overlooked in visual arts, dor as a creative emotion activates imagination. Missing and longing for a certain being, place, or situation constructs a tension between what is lost, and often no longer attainable, and what is desired, and equally unreachable; between memories from the past and the anticipation of the future.
