Features essays and photos, documenting the life, art and the extraordinary body of sculptural work left by the cult post-minimalist artist, Eva Hesse, who died tragically at the age of 34 in 1970.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
informative overview to this influential but short-lived artist,
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This review is from: Encountering Eva Hesse (Hardcover)
Leaving an extensive body of work in varied media and an unfinished, seeming boundless career when she died in 1970 at the age of 34 from over-exposure to the toxic materials she used in her art, Eva Hesse was rendered into an almost legendary figure representing the risks and promise of art coming about in the culturally fertile period of the 1960s. Born in Germany, she emigrated as a girl to the U.S. with her family; and did most of her art work in New York City. Containing numerous samples of all kinds of Hesse's work, the book with its nine writings from individuals who knew Hesse and her work well, including an interview with Hesse's one-time collaborator Doug Johns, is mainly an expansive reflection on her as a person and artist. The writers variously recount and discuss her techniques, and consider her place in modern art. The assorted remembrances and thoughts combine for an attempt "to apply these newer critical concepts to her work" (referring to new critical theory which has been developed for dealing more appropriately with postmodern and women's art in the decades since Hesse died). In an informal way through remembrances, knowledgeable though limited comments on the art including pertinent of pertinent remarks by Hesse, and loosely organized chapters--rather than systematic or scholarly investigation, for example--the book brings comprehension of Hesse forward without proffering a definitive view.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Save yourself! Run! Chose another Hesse reference!!!!,
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This review is from: Encountering Eva Hesse (Hardcover)
Griselda Pollock and Vanessa Corby have written a scholarly work including a compilation of instructive essays on the life and work of German born sculptor, Eva Hesse. Hesse, tragically dead from brain cancer at 34, began her life of art work with feet firmly planted in classical training and went on to pioneer new ground for artists and women alike. Encountering Eva Hesse is comprised of nice chapters, six of which are contributions by Hesse's contemporaries and admirers. These sections serve to shed light on some of the mechanisms by which art is born and the ways in which one artist affects another. They scrutinize many interesting facets of the art world, entertaining ideas about things like the difference between opinion and critique, what makes an experience "female" vs. human, and (of particular interest) how to understand works of art as revolutionary without the need to like the work itself.
Pollack and Corby do a good job putting together information about Eva Hesse. They provide the reader a history of Hesse's life and work in a somewhat bland and unremarkable manner, except where they appear to allow the glorification of her early death. In the process of this non-descript homage I feel the editors leave to chance any thoughts of Hesse's work in biographical terms - something I feel is more than a little significant. She was, after all, a German-born Jew whose work would have been vilified by the Nazis - had she been allowed to live. Additionally, her most noteworthy work came about during some fourteen months of residency in Germany, a place she had been forced to flee as a child. Despite the emergence of this collection as a relevant methods and technique discussion, I think the artist's biographical experience is accorded too little time. Anne Middleton Wagner does a wonderful job of providing commentary on Eva Hesse - along with Lee Krasner and Georgia O'Keefe - and infuses her work with the appropriate investigation into artists translating and negotiating the world as creatives who are also female.
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