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Minimalism With Soul
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| The 1965 piece "no title" by Eva Hesse. A MOCA exhibit features the work of the artist who died of a brain tumor at the age of 34. Photo courtesy MOCA, collection of Tony and Gail Ganz, Los Angeles © The Estate of Eva Hesse, Hauser & Wirth Zurich London. |
MOCA's 'Eva Hesse Drawing' Delves Into A Life Cut Short
by Lea Lion
Eva Hesse's drawings are predominantly blank paper. Some depict faint graphite lines on pages torn from a notebook. Others appear as nonsensical doodles rendered in black ink. Most are surrounded by a sea of white matte and hung on equally white gallery walls. The effect is at once sophisticated and childlike.
This stark world is displayed in the exhibit Eva Hesse Drawing, on view at MOCA through Oct. 23. Known primarily for droopy latex and fiberglass sculptures, Hesse also was a prolific diarist and kept countless sketchbooks throughout her short life. The exhibit is the first in more than 20 years to isolate her drawing and includes 50 never-before-seen sketches as well as several well-known sculptural works from 1960 to 1970.
Hesse's drawings - most likely never intended for public viewing - tell the story of how she blended two seemingly disparate artistic concepts. Her work at once embodies the prevailing art movement of her day, Minimalism, and rejects it for a more organic sensibility.
Hesse, who died of a brain tumor in 1970, at the age of 34, once referred to some of her sketches as "child" drawing. While many of them could pass unnoticed on refrigerator doors, put into historical context, they act as sophisticated statements about her environment. Working in New York in the 1960s, Hesse was surrounded by Minimalism's geometric shapes and monochromatic colors. Her contemporaries, such as sculptors Robert Morris and Richard Serra and painter Frank Stella, strived towards mathematically regular compositions. Hesse borrowed the Minimalist practice of repetition (many of her drawings are on graph paper) but was "thinking outside the box," said Catherine de Zegher, the exhibit's curator.
"It's like she is using these geometric forms, but they become something much more in her hands. When she encounters Minimalism she takes that up, but does something to it that makes it almost organic," said de Zegher.
"She wanted to belong to the mainstream, to get recognition for her work. But at the same time she wanted to hold on to her womanliness, to her femininity."
One sparsely hung wall of Eva Hesse Drawing features a horizontal series of small drawings on graph paper from 1967. From a distance, there appears to be a black rectangle in the middle of one of the untitled images, but a closer inspection reveals that the shape consists of hundreds of miniscule, hand-drawn X's. While each X roughly fills one light-blue box of graph paper, they are all slightly imperfect. The next drawing - also untitled - depicts a similar image, except each X is replaced by an O.
In these images, "there is a connection with the weaving grid," de Zegher pointed out. "One of the things that is seen as feminine is textiles, but it is amazing how [Hesse] is able to transcend craft and turn it into work that is very feminine, but can be part of the mainstream."
Outside the Box
Born in 1936, Hesse and her family fled Nazi Germany and arrived in New York three years later. Before she turned 10, her mother suffered a breakdown, her parents divorced and her mother committed suicide. Nevertheless, Hesse pursued her interest in art, attending New York's School of Industrial Art, Pratt Institute and Cooper Union. In 1957, she entered Yale University, where she studied painting with renowned Bauhaus artist Josef Albers.
In 1961, Hesse exhibited her work as part of a group exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum and married sculptor Tom Doyle. The couple spent 1964 living in Germany, working in a textile factory and experimenting with alternative methods of art making. This influenced her subsequent textile-like compositions, such as the untitled series from 1967. After returning to New York, Hesse began to gain recognition for her work and had a solo show at the Fischbach Gallery. Three years later, she died.
Although her life and career were cut short, the personal notes and sketches in Eva Hesse Drawing help to bridge the gap between the late artist and her modern viewers. Connecting disparate elements, de Zeger said, is the point.
"She is able to transcend order and disorder and bring opposites together. Her work is about connection and connectivity and interaction," she said.
Perhaps that is why it is so fitting that as viewers wander through the interconnected whitewashed galleries, one of the last sculptures they encounter is Hesse's untitled 1967 work. It features a pyramid of gray tubes connected by wire loops, dangling, with no other purpose, onto the floor.
Eva Hesse Drawing runs through Oct. 23 at MOCA, 250 S. Grand Ave., (213) 626-6222 or moca.org.
Contact Lea Lion at lea@downtownnews.com.
page 21, 8/14/2006
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
This stark world is displayed in the exhibit Eva Hesse Drawing, on view at MOCA through Oct. 23. Known primarily for droopy latex and fiberglass sculptures, Hesse also was a prolific diarist and kept countless sketchbooks throughout her short life. The exhibit is the first in more than 20 years to isolate her drawing and includes 50 never-before-seen sketches as well as several well-known sculptural works from 1960 to 1970.
Hesse's drawings - most likely never intended for public viewing - tell the story of how she blended two seemingly disparate artistic concepts. Her work at once embodies the prevailing art movement of her day, Minimalism, and rejects it for a more organic sensibility.
Hesse, who died of a brain tumor in 1970, at the age of 34, once referred to some of her sketches as "child" drawing. While many of them could pass unnoticed on refrigerator doors, put into historical context, they act as sophisticated statements about her environment. Working in New York in the 1960s, Hesse was surrounded by Minimalism's geometric shapes and monochromatic colors. Her contemporaries, such as sculptors Robert Morris and Richard Serra and painter Frank Stella, strived towards mathematically regular compositions. Hesse borrowed the Minimalist practice of repetition (many of her drawings are on graph paper) but was "thinking outside the box," said Catherine de Zegher, the exhibit's curator.
"It's like she is using these geometric forms, but they become something much more in her hands. When she encounters Minimalism she takes that up, but does something to it that makes it almost organic," said de Zegher.
"She wanted to belong to the mainstream, to get recognition for her work. But at the same time she wanted to hold on to her womanliness, to her femininity."
One sparsely hung wall of Eva Hesse Drawing features a horizontal series of small drawings on graph paper from 1967. From a distance, there appears to be a black rectangle in the middle of one of the untitled images, but a closer inspection reveals that the shape consists of hundreds of miniscule, hand-drawn X's. While each X roughly fills one light-blue box of graph paper, they are all slightly imperfect. The next drawing - also untitled - depicts a similar image, except each X is replaced by an O.
In these images, "there is a connection with the weaving grid," de Zegher pointed out. "One of the things that is seen as feminine is textiles, but it is amazing how [Hesse] is able to transcend craft and turn it into work that is very feminine, but can be part of the mainstream."
Born in 1936, Hesse and her family fled Nazi Germany and arrived in New York three years later. Before she turned 10, her mother suffered a breakdown, her parents divorced and her mother committed suicide. Nevertheless, Hesse pursued her interest in art, attending New York's School of Industrial Art, Pratt Institute and Cooper Union. In 1957, she entered Yale University, where she studied painting with renowned Bauhaus artist Josef Albers.
In 1961, Hesse exhibited her work as part of a group exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum and married sculptor Tom Doyle. The couple spent 1964 living in Germany, working in a textile factory and experimenting with alternative methods of art making. This influenced her subsequent textile-like compositions, such as the untitled series from 1967. After returning to New York, Hesse began to gain recognition for her work and had a solo show at the Fischbach Gallery. Three years later, she died.
Although her life and career were cut short, the personal notes and sketches in Eva Hesse Drawing help to bridge the gap between the late artist and her modern viewers. Connecting disparate elements, de Zeger said, is the point.
"She is able to transcend order and disorder and bring opposites together. Her work is about connection and connectivity and interaction," she said.
Perhaps that is why it is so fitting that as viewers wander through the interconnected whitewashed galleries, one of the last sculptures they encounter is Hesse's untitled 1967 work. It features a pyramid of gray tubes connected by wire loops, dangling, with no other purpose, onto the floor.
Eva Hesse Drawing runs through Oct. 23 at MOCA, 250 S. Grand Ave., (213) 626-6222 or moca.org.
Contact Lea Lion at lea@downtownnews.com.
page 21, 8/14/2006
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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