Lasting Eva

In the late sixties artists challenged the value which is meant to be showcased for its value instead they draw attention to the action of their process. The ideology behind the process art movements is to see the process greater than the the form. Process artists also had the belief that experimentation and allowing the materials to speak their language is where the value comes through. Eva Hesse a German born artist and one of the most influential artists from this movement contributing greatly through her abstract yet minimalist sculptures and rejected the traditional attributes of monumental sculpture. Her sculptures made of latex, plastic, fibreglass and cheesecloth evoked these organic forms that hung, draped, dangled or even lay. Her work also relates to the emotional struggles to her body and life connecting both life and death and life and art. She eccentricated forms by breaking sculptures classical conventions like volume and verticality. Though Eva Hesse had an unfortunately brief career her impact with what she created is still overwhelming. Her groundbreaking pieces which attempted to portray the absurdity of life and the current state of deterioration is continuing Eva Hesse’s legacy. The trajectory of her pieces are widely discussed by museum curators and bring up conversations around the conservation practices of Eva’s transitory pieces. The evocative impact Hesse’s work ensures the continuous potential of engagement beyond just an artists tragic death. 

It is difficult not to create based on what one experiences and instead do it in such a way that is not defining what you create. Eva’s life consists of a number of dramatic events throughout her short life which implicitly resonate with how and what she created. She formed a perplexing relationship between art and life. Hesse was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1936 and had to flee Nazis Germany in 1938. As a result Hesse's mother became increasingly depressed and committed suicide by jumping out of a window. Hesse being only ten years old was traumatised by her mother’s death and especially in the last years of her life influenced her art with her Woodstock drawings. These drawings are richly expressive and are encoded with a number of drawing techniques. They are now known as the window paintings. They resemble windows and have been explored as a metaphor representing complex biographic circumstances that require and function with an abstract level of interpretation. This theme of fleeing and escapism develops throughout her work as they were constant themes turning up in her life. Her creative handling and ephemerality of her work suggest the connections she made between art and life from the experiences of her short life.

The cycle that the materials go through and how ephemerality is an evident factor and focus on process greater than the form. The materials are definitive and irredeemable losses just as the horrors of the Holocaust which she had experienced are. Inevitably her pieces create their “own narrativity on time, life, art and death encoded into its very materiality.”  (Corby, 17) In the mid sixties artists like Eva Hesse reacted against minimalism as an art movement and investigated as well as documented the artistic process. Often these artists intentionally exposed the traces of its process as the final form. Eva being one of the leaders of this movement created innovative sculptures with synthetic material like fiberglass, latex, and plastic. She responded to the rigidity and uniformity of minimalism and in her words explains it to “challenge the norms of beauty and order” (Artsy) She found inspiration in the human body and the liberating qualities of improvisation.

 Her radical use of non-traditional material and the embrace of material processes random occurrence is especially evident in her Expanded Expansion sculpture created in 1969. The repetitive panels of fibreglass poles which are durable and fixed are covered in fragile cheesecloth masked in rubber. This sculpture is an embodiment of contradictions like most of her pieces. Both permanence and deterioration are apparent in this piece as the height is always fixed but the length varies because of its accordion like panels which expand and compress. The Expanded Expansion piece had no escape from its deterioration and this process it undergoes speaks an effective language to communicate life, death, time and space. Eva played with her material and pushed unfamiliarity and contradictions to confront the minimalist art movement The discussion of full replication comes in to conflict with Eva’s approach to her aging works and brings up the idea of them stopping her movement and the  materials process. 

Eva’s pieces ondergoed unexpected changes and becomes difficult to understand her reasoning for using such temporary materials. The materials she choose to use have their own life cycle and as sculptures are exposed to the light and air they change. She was swooned by the materials like latex to stop using them even with the knowledge of it not being able to last: “At this point I feel a little guilty when people want to buy it. I think they know but I want to write them a letter and say it’s not not going to last... Life doesn’t last; art doesn't last. It doesn't matter.”(Nemster, 218) Since Eva’s solo exhibition: Chain Polymers was held at the Fischbach Gallery in New York she gained more attention and became a larger phenomenon. Although not all of her work is vulnerable and fragile the pieces that have disintegrated are no longer exhibitale. Schema and Sequel are two latex pieces which are in a much better condition than some of the others from the chain polymers exhibit. Incorporating aging as a part of her work and letting it continue through this process and letting the unknown prevail is something that she anticipated. 

The legacy of Eva’s practice opens an interesting discussion around the recreation and appropriation of artist’s work which opens interesting conversation of how museum curators display the deteriorated condition of pieces like Eva. It was Eva’s intention to use materials with this quality. She was not making objects per se instead concepts and when the pieces are recreated it is jeopardizing the value and focus of the process of the original pieces. Many people who were close to her explained the feeling that came when creating her pieces and how when she created it had “to be her random”(Barger). She embraced it, instead of forcing something that is cyclous a greater representation to honour her legacy would be by finding new ways to display this aspect of her art and to honour her methodology rather than full replication. 

During Eva’s short life she contributed and influenced the preexisting art conventions, radically disturbing what it means to be a women artist and helped create a genre that went beyond minimalism and led the process art movement. Eva matured as an artist during the 1960s and emerged alongside the women’s movement when counterculture gained some acknowledgment. Although Eva herself did not consider herself as a feminist, her avant-garde explorations had a powerful influence as well as challenged the perception of women artists. She challenged minimalism and still reigns as one of the most innovative artist of the post war scene. 

Her contributions to movements like post-minimalism and process art greatly shifted favoured genres of her day. Some refer to her as an event which is apart of the histories of art. Eva questioned the rigidity of minimalism and let improvisation and process become the form. There has been many times which Eva explains that her work takes on the idea of anti-aesthetic and strives to achieve imperfectionism. Her work questions practices while leaving a trace of her beyond just a reflection of her as a biographical person. Her aim was to create Art that wasn't "art". "I wanted to get to nonart, nonconnotive, nonanthropomorphic, nongeometric, non, nothing, everything, but of another kind, vision, sort, from a total other reference point,"(Glueck) she wrote in an exhibition statement in 1968. She has shaped sculpture with her extraordinary use of materials and the language they spoke. Also the deterioration status that her work is currently inhabiting is still challenging thought and discussion on replication, specifically her expiring works. Now eva’s work has been re-presented internationally to re-framing the understanding of the work.

Eva’s life, history of practice and the continuous potential of engagement to this day proves that her processes are greater than the end result; her death. Her art and art-thought made such impact and her practices leave a trace of her ever developing body of works beyond a reflection of her as a biographical person. Hesse and the timelines interlaced in her work has been represented internationally and re-framed with the understanding of the work as well as a focus towards the action and history of their formation.