Eva Hesse: Her significance in Modern Art

One of the most promising modern German artists recognized from 1960 through 1970 was Eva Hesse (1936 – 1970). She had used different methods in art such as paintings, drawings, collages, gouaches as well as sculptures to create a artistic pieces that would surely catch people’s attention not only for its aesthetic value but for the deep-seated meanings her works convey (sfmoma. org, 2007). One of Hesse’s famous artworks was her mid-1960’s sculpture which she called “Untitled or Not Yet”; this sculpture was acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in the year 1997.

SFMOMA described her artwork as a piece that perfectly symbolizes the fundamental nature her piece (sfmoma. org, 2007). Eva Hesse being sometimes associated with minimalism constructed this sculpture using different materials which are not sophisticated and are normally available anywhere such as dyed fishnet bags filled and stretched by a stack made up of sand, paper, cotton string, metal weghts and see-through polyethylene.

The shape created by these elements is not similar or can not be associated to the shapes of conventional sculptures.

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The resulting form and shape of Hesse’s oeuvre are more or less anthropomorphic. The art work disproves the instinctive or primitive and intense form all through the impersonal, ordinary materials utilized to be able to fashion it. Hesse’s “Untitled or Not Yet” (1966) is a 71x 15. 5 x 8. 25 inches (180. 34 x 39. 7 x 20. 96 cm) art work (sfmoma. org, 2007). According to sfmoma. org, at the time Hesse made this sculpture she was intentionally focusing on creating objects that will appear to be conceptual or abstract and produce instantly recognizable sensations attached to it but not necessarily to be interpreted as an erotic object.

In Lucy R. Lippard’s book entitled “Eva Hesse”(1976), Hesse’s life and works are accounted and explained.

Lippard give details on how Hesse’s work was profoundly incorporated with her life and how her sculpture have evolved and improved all through the long periods of struggles with her philosophy along with complicated concepts with regards to art as a way of expressing the real meaning of the self. With in the passages of the book, Lippard had written down lines of discussion with reference to Hesse’s work that requests the reader to watchfully consider her art’s personal and psychological underlying meanings devoid of sensationalizing the unfortunate happenings in the artist’s life, which is often done by the press since she died.

Lippard had also explained how Hesse’s fanatical processes, sensuous consistency, Minimalist language rules, and meaningless, capricious forms produce a primordial and phantasmal self embodiment of the artist. There was a line in the book by Lippard that said Eva Hesse labored for her art work starting with identifying the body through an objective recognition with the artwork itself, as though producing a matching part of herself as well as the illogicality of the life she owns as a means to be able to survive it. (Kovach, 2003) Lippard (1976) also discussed that when Eva Hesse was still living she protested that stern and serious tests were not done to her works unlike the works her male colleagues had, that is why she stood still with her belief that her unsuccessful attempt of achieving the respectful status as an artist was caused primarily by the conventional notions of the people towards the roles of women in society.