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Eva Hesse
Studiowork

No title (S-93), 1967

Works by Eva Hesse: © The Estate of Eva Hesse (Courtesy Hauser & Wirth), 2010

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With the sponsoring of: With the support of:

CÀTEDRA D’ART I CULTURA

CONTEMPORANIS - UDG

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14 May – 1 August 2010
 Alongside her large-scale sculptures, the American artist

Eva Hesse produced a great many small experimental works

in a remarkably unusual range of materials, including latex,

fibreglass, wire-mesh, cheesecloth, masking tape and wax.

These small works have often been called ‘test-pieces’, on

the assumption that they were made to test out materials

and techniques in preparation for other more ambitious

work. However, it is clear that they were rarely only techni-

cal experiments. The studioworks show Eva Hesse’s radi-

cally innovative use of materials, but they also demonstrate

– as a collection-in-miniature of her working methods –

her radical transformation of sculpture at a time when the

very nature of the art object itself was in crisis. As much as

other seminal artists of the 1960s such as Andy Warhol or

Donald Judd, Eva Hesse redefined the nature of the aesthetic

encounter in a way that still has repercussions for us today.

Eva Hesse lying on daybed, c. 1968-69. Photo by Herman Landshoff

Eva Hesse. Studiowork
Briony Fer
Eva Hesse’s career was abruptly cut short by her tragic death of a brain tumour in
May 1970 at the age of 34. She left a studio full of work, both finished and unfin-
ished, as well as many smaller studioworks. In 1979, a large group of these smaller
pieces was given by Hesse’s sister, Helen Hesse Charash, to the Berkeley Museum
of Art. Others had been given away by the artist herself during her lifetime as gifts
to friends such as fellow artist Sol LeWitt. Still more, notably the group of papier-
mâché shapes shown in public for the very first time in this exhibition, were simply
stored away after her death. The studioworks are made the focus of this exhibition,
bringing them back together from diverse collections and placing them in the
context of some of her larger pieces.
Hesse’s intense artistic career spanned just ten years in total, but her output has
proven to be of crucial importance to the history of twentieth century art. Eva Hesse
began as a painter in 1960, having studied at Yale, and only later turned to sculpture.
It was in 1965, during a year spent in Germany with her then husband, the sculptor
Tom Doyle, that she started to make three dimensional work. At first these were
highly coloured reliefs, made of shapes that resembled weirdly textured body-parts
– breasts, nipples, penises – combined together to look like wildly dysfunctional
erotic machines. Her studio in the German town of Kettwig was in an old disused
textile factory where she found abandoned bits of machinery that she combined
with string and papier-mâché.
By the time she returned to New York after a year in Europe her work had transformed:
it was now strongly sculptural, even when it hung on the wall. Works that were attached
to the wall like a picture instead behaved, or rather misbehaved, as if they were so
many part-objects, with palpable textures, pendulous shapes and quirky protrusions.
In their visceral as well as sometimes comic effects, these objects seemed very far
removed from the smooth contemporary finishes of Minimalism. Like a return of the
hidden, Hesse brought the sensual bodily qualities of art back into play.
In September 1967 Eva Hesse first began to use latex, which she bought in liquid form
from a supplier on Canal Street in Lower Manhattan. Shortly afterwards she started
to experiment with fibreglass. These were synthetic materials. But rather than suggest
technological or industrial surfaces, Hesse used them to map a radically different
bodily topography. Hesse’s work is full of allusions to the body without being a conven-
tional depiction of the body. More and more, as she discovered new materials, she
relied on their often bizarre and sensual effects to make the sexual reference for her,
rather than incorporate recognisable body-shapes. Although her work is often charac-
terised as ‘organic’ in opposition to the ‘geometric’ vocabulary of the Minimalists, in
fact her work tends to disallow straightforward oppositions of this kind – preferring to
work with shapes and structures that were both organic and geometric at the same
time – as if art were a way of making a contradiction in terms into a material thing.
No title (S-124), 1968. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (gift of Helen Hesse
Charash, 1979). Photo: Ben Blackwell, Alameda, CA. No title (S-89), 1968. Mr. and Mrs. Ronald B. Lynn, Westwood.
Photo: Abby Robinson, New York
The term ‘test-piece’ was not one that Hesse herself used to describe her small experi-
mental works. If anything, in her notes, she referred to ‘samples’. The term ‘test-piece’
got attached to them after her death, partly by default. It was – like ‘prototype’ – an
expression of the times, revealing a desire to link art with the language of industry.
This was a time when artists often had work made by fabricators to their specification,
when art was divested of the aura of the individual expressive trace of the artist’s
touch. Hesse carried on making smaller objects herself but, like so many artists at
this time, used fabricators and assistants to make the large-scale pieces. But the term
‘test-piece’ arguably links her work too much with the technophilia then prevalent,
and not enough with its sheer
corporeality and bodily associa-
tions. The renaming ‘studiowork’
coined in the title of this exhibition
is intended as a more elastic term
to describe this deeply enigmatic
range of objects, which are neither
purely technical experiments nor
necessarily finished pieces in their
own right. They are liminal, falling
somewhere between the two and
resisting easy categorisation.
The status of the studiowork is
precarious. A reasonable definition
might be that studiowork is work
without necessarily becoming ‘a
work’. These are things made by
Hesse on a daily basis, handmade
and often intricate objects that
No title (S-112), 1968.  Private Collection. Photo: Ed Restle, invite us to think not only about the
courtesy Museum Wiesbaden
processes of art but what impulses
– both conscious and unconscious – drive the making of art. It might even be that
making small things like this in the studio not only provides a way of working things
out, of thinking through making, but even prolongs the process of making – deferring
an end product in favour of process. The compulsive desire to repeat is evident in
much of the studiowork and the techniques deployed by the artist, like threading,
folding, cutting, piercing and winding, are often based on repetitive actions and ges-
tures. Looking at the objects is also to see these actions unfolding. Something that
initially seems almost accidental and throwaway, like an oddly shaped piece of latex,
takes time to look at – and as you look, the gestures that went into making it become
clearer. So something that initially looks like a piece of studio debris can come into
being as an object as you look at it. The studiowork is at that tipping point between
origin and leftover.
There is a photograph of a table in Hesse’s apartment that shows some of the studio-
works scattered across the surface strewn with other ephemera, including reviews of
her own show at the Fischbach Gallery in 1968, flyers and leaflets for shows by her
artist-friends like Carl Andre and Ruth Vollmer, and much else. This photo was actu-
ally taken by her friend the artist Mel Bochner as part of an unfinished series of pho-
tographs of artist’s work tables – which fitted with Bochner’s own interest in ‘working
drawings’ and what he called the ‘upstream of art’ – that is, the work that went into
the artwork. Seen from this point
of view, the photograph is much
more than simply a document
of Hesse’s table. It is itself a work
that is comparable to Hesse’s
studiowork: a work about making
work. Hesse’s table was made
for her by Sol LeWitt and had a
grey grid painted on it. The stuff
of art and life that is scattered
across it plays out a dynamic
of order and accident that char-
Eva Hesse table, c. 1968-1969. Photo by Mel Bochner acterises all her work.
Of course it is possible to trace links between the studioworks and Hesse’s large-
scale works, but this can all too easily explain them away. They can also be thought
of in relation to her continuous process of drawing – a practice she maintained
throughout her career. This exhibition aims to focus on the studiowork as a group of
material objects that deserve attention in their own right, rather than as subsidiary
to some other aspect of her work. As such, they reflect her working process, running
the gamut between small works, models, samples, partial works, spare parts, trials,
fragments, to abandoned bits and pieces. They fall somewhere beneath the threshold
of sculpture as it is usually understood. And yet they have the materiality that we
Works from 1965-66
in Eva Hesse’s studio.
Photo: Gretchen Lambert
associate with sculptural objects. They are part of a history of what can be called studioworks, have turned a
‘sub-objects’ – things that get made in the studio and which are not thrown away but deep amber colour and are
at the same time are not endowed with the imprimatur of a one-off finished piece. brittle, as compared with the
creamy white and supple mate-
The debris of artist’s studios has a certain allure. Since the late nineteenth century, rial it once was. Depending on
photographers have exploited the seductive shadows of the studio, from Rodin how thick it is, a layer can be
through to Giacometti, to create the aura of art in the making. However, Hesse’s translucent, but over time it will
studiowork, whilst part of a larger historical context of sub-objects, also breaks with become opaque. Fibreglass too
the traditional mythology of the studio as a mysterious private realm. For one thing, changes colour, turning from
Hesse herself exhibited some of the little experimental pieces in a glass pastry case clear and transparent to yellowy
at the back of her first major solo show of sculpture held at the Fischbach Gallery green. Although she liked their
in New York at the end of 1968. Alongside the case were some latex buckets and temporality, it is hard to know
Installation views, Eva Hesse, Droll/Kolbert Gallery,
sleeves. This suggests that she wanted them to be seen in public. They had leached what she would have made of
New York, 1977
out of the confines of the studio to enter the public realm of the exhibition. From their disappearing altogether.
now on they had a life outside the studio as well as inside. The deterioration of the materi-
als can make them look like
Placing the studioworks in glass cases was one way of arranging and showing them. ruins but it is still possible to
The idea of grouping them together is fundamental to Hesse’s approach to all her get a sense of Hesse’s preoccu-
work, much of which consists of multiple elements in fairly random arrangements. pations. In particular, Hesse
The accidental look is important. It suggests something more temporary than perma- was concerned with light –
nent. Her large-scale work was often made so that it could expand to occupy the space exactly what makes her materi-
in which in would be situated – the units could be spread out more in a larger space als deteriorate, of course, but
or contract in a small room – or a hanging piece might vary in length according to which also animates them.
the height of the ceiling. The distribution of the little test-pieces in the glass cases Light filters through her materi-
is simply another version of this: never intended to be fixed but always imagined as als to different degrees,
No title (S-97), 1967. University of California, Berkeley Art
fluid and mutable arrangements. showing her interest in opacity
Museum & Pacific Film Archive, gift of Helen Hesse Charash, 1979.
Photo: Ben Blackwell, Alameda CA  and translucency.
There is a lot of discussion nowadays about the fragility of the materials that Hesse
used. This has become an urgent problem for museums and conservators because Over the course of 1969, Hesse worked on a large-scale piece that ended up as Con-
the works have so deteriorated, especially the latex pieces. To a certain extent, tingent. It was made up of eight separate panels suspended from the ceiling and at
however, the changes wrought by time on the materials were very much part of their right angles to the wall. Each panel was made of a mixture of fibreglass and latex-
appeal for Hesse. She was well aware that latex was a perishable material. She even coated cheesecloth. Each was different from the next and deliberately irregular. During
chose to use it partly because it was – because it meant that it had time built into it. the making of this piece, executed by her assistants, Hesse had to interrupt her work
Latex hardens over time and changes colour. Many of the latex pieces, including the process because of health problems. But she got it done and it was exhibited in a

No title (S-153), 1969. The Estate of Eva Hesse
(Courtesy Hauser & Wirth). Photo: A. Burger, Zurich
No title (S-155), 1969. The Estate of Eva Hesse
(Courtesy Hauser & Wirth). Photo: A. Burger, Zurich
No title (S-117), 1968. Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific
Film Archive (gift of Helen Hesse Charash, 1979).
Photo: Ben Blackwell, Alameda CA
group show at Finch College in New
York. She also made other panels
associated with it, one of which she
gave to her friend Naomi Spector
and which is now in the National
Gallery of Art in Washington. Al-
though this was always called a
‘test-piece’, it is worth noting that it
was a gift and therefore, one might
assume, also more than just a test-
piece. Naomi Spector herself has
always said that she never consid-
ered it anything other than a work.
There is another little known work.
Considerably longer than the others,
the single panel began, according to
Hesse’s notes, as part of the larger
work but later she decided that it
was a separate piece. That is to say,
the status of the object changed
over time. It began as one thing and
became something else. Although it
was sold as a separate piece during
her lifetime, it is unclear which way
round Hesse would have intended to
hang it. Or rather, following the logic
of her work, it could plausibly be
hung either parallel or perpendicular
to the wall. The flexibility of orienta-
tion is, characteristically, not fixed
but open. If the work is viewed from
a distance, it almost looks like a
materialist antidote to a Rothko
painting. It has the same vertical ladder of lighter and darker bands, but instead of
layers of paint these are layers of liquid latex painted onto cheesecloth next to sec-
tions of translucent fibreglass and polyester resin. Looked at very closely, it is possible
to see the irregular grid of the loose weave of the cheesecloth through the latex.
Hesse’s work challenged assumptions about what sculpture should look like but also,
through introducing the possibility of multiple orientations, she opened the object
to the expanded situation of its setting. This is true of all her work, although it is not
only anticipated but is dramatically played out in the often open-ended experiments
that make up studiowork, where in many cases it is impossible to say ‘which way
around’ an object should go. When Hesse bought some canvas boat bumpers from
a marine supplier she covered them with dangling strings like so much pubic hair
– making a readymade strange and transforming it into an uncanny object. The
three-cornered star shape invites the viewer to think of rotating and touching it.
The extreme tactility of the materials does not literally need to be handled in order
to incite such a powerful and volatile sense of touch. As a consequence, looking and
touching become intimately entwined. This open-endedness is nowhere more appar-
ent than in the paper bowls that Hesse probably made in the last year of her life.
These are rather different form her earlier use of papier-mâché, where she moulded
newspaper around an inflated balloon and then painted it in a hard shell of enamel
paint. In some of these later pieces, strips of paper are laid on in a grid and left
bare; in others tissue paper is moulded around a curved shape to make a surface
that is barely there.
Some of Hesse’s studioworks are almost viscerally material. Others are almost unbear-
ably ephemeral in their effect. But a powerful logic holds them together – a logic that
plays between presence and absence, materiality and immateriality. They may not in
the end be ‘test-pieces’ in the sense of that term as it is applied in industrial design.
But there is a sense in which they do test out our capacity to see them as sculpture.
They are prototypes, not for designs or finished products but of a kind of looking that
is full of sense and touch. In this way, the processes of making are translated into
the processes of looking. Rather than marginal to the ‘main’ work, the studiowork is
at the very heart of Hesse’s approach to making art. It is Hesse at her most extreme,
and therefore allows us to see her radical contribution to the history of sculpture.
Related Activities
Exhibition Space
In the area Combined Arts (A Place for
Education, Exhibition and Research), visitors
will be able to consult documents and material
related to the exhibitions Eva Hesse.Studiowork
and Alma Matrix. Bracha L. Ettinger and Ria
Verhaeghe, as well as educational resources.
14 May – 1 August
Seminar
Processual Art and the Object:
Repetition, the Ephemeral
Coinciding with the exhibitions Eva Hesse.
Studiowork and Alma Matrix. Bracha L. Ettinger
and Ria Verhaeghe, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies,
in collaboration with the Càtedra d’Art i Cultura
Contemporanis, Universitat de Girona, has
organised a seminar about the role played, in
art history, by the spaces generated in artistic
production by processual or relational works,
or works in transformation. It is a vision of art
history that includes themes such as relation,
absence, the ephemeral, grieving, prints
or process, and that goes beyond the
concept of art centred around the object.
Programme
Friday 14 May 2010
Morning
10.30 h. Guided visit to the exhibition Eva Hesse.
Studiowork by Briony Fer. Conversation in
the exhibition space of Alma Matrix. Bracha
L. Ettinger and Ria Verhaeghe between
Catherine de Zegher, Bracha L. Ettinger
and Ria Verhaeghe. Activities in English.
13.00 h. Lightpainting and Com-pass(ion),
lecture by Bracha L. Ettinger.
Place: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Auditorium.
Tuesday 25 May 2010
Morning
11.00 h. Presentation by Laurence Rassel,
Director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies,
and Maria-Josep Balsach, Director of the
Càtedra d’Art i Cultura Contemporanis,
Universitat de Girona.
11.30 to 12.15 h. Sub-objects and Studiowork,
lecture by Briony Fer.
12.30 to 13.15 h. From Studiowork to Webwork,
lecture by Catherine de Zegher.
Place: Càtedra d’Art i Cultura Contemporanis,
Sala de Graus, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat
de Girona.
Afternoon
19.00 to 19.45 h. Finished and Unfinished,
from Studio Work to Art Criticism, lecture
by Elisabeth Lebovici.
19.45 to 20.30 h. Out-takes, Snippets,
and Goings-On: The Moving Image in
the Studio, lecture by Michael Newman.
Place: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Auditorium.
Wednesday 26 May 2010
Afternoon
18.00 to 18.45 h. L’éphèmere et le nouveau
statut de l’art (The ephemeral and the
new status of art), lecture by Christine
Buci-Glucksmann.
19.00 to 19.45 h. Coser con un hilo invisible.
Correspondencias de/entre Bracha L. Ettinger,
Eva Hesse y Ria Verhaeghe con algunas
artistas españolas (To sew with an invisible
thread. Correspondences between Bracha L.
Ettinger, Eva Hesse and Ria Verhaeghe
and some Spanish artists), lecture by
Patricia Mayayo.
19.45 to 20.30 h. La imatge ferida (The
wounded image), lecture by Maria-Josep
Balsach.
20.30 h. Debate and closure of the seminar.
Place: Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Auditorium.
Organised by: Fundació Antoni Tàpies
and Càtedra d’Art i Cultura Contemporanis,
Universitat de Girona.
In collaboration with: Master in Communication
and Art Criticism of the Universitat de
Girona, and the Research Project ‘Archive Politics
and New Tendencies in Contemporary Artistic
Practice’. (Ministry of Science and Innovation)
All lectures will take place at the Fundació
Antoni Tàpies, c/ Aragó, 255,
08007 Barcelona (t) +34 934 870 315,
www.fundaciotapies.org,
and at the Sala de graus, Facultat de Lletres,
Universitat de Girona, Plaça Ferrater Mora, 1,
17071 Girona (t) + 972 418 211,
www.udg.edu/catedres/ArtiCulturaContemporanis.
All lectures at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies
will offer simultaneous translation.
Seminar fee: 5 € (limited places)
Inscriptions: recepcio@ftapies.com
(t) +34 934 870 315
Education Department Activities
Visit for teachers
Visit to the exhibitions Eva Hesse.
Studiowork and Alma Matrix. Bracha
L. Ettinger and Ria Verhaeghe
Saturday 15 May 2010 at 11.00 h
Free activity for teachers.
Activity for family, around the
Temporary Exhibitions
“The Small Hemispheres of Eva Hesse”,
activity around the life and work of Eva Hesse,
recommended for 6 to 12 year-old children.
Saturday 15 May, 18.00 h
Booking fee: adults, 3 euros (children and
Friends of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, free).
Guided visit to the Fundació
Antoni Tàpies’
exhibitions Eva Hesse. Studiowork
and Alma Matrix. Bracha L. Ettinger
and Ria Verhaeghe
Saturday 5 June, 18.00 h
Booking fee (including access to the
museum): adults, 5 euros; students and
pensioners, 3 euros; Friends of the
Fundació Antoni Tàpies, free.
Activity for the Friends of
the Fundació Antoni Tàpies
Guided visit to the exhibition
Eva Hesse. Studiowork, by Laurence Rassel,
Director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies.
Thursday 20 May, 18.30 h