Eva Hesse responds to de Kooning
It is rare to encounter an exhibition as coherent and revealing as Spectre, the Eva Hesse show currently at the Brooklyn Museum. Perfectly installed in a well-lit, airy space, this small group of paintings from 1960 was never seen before last year, when it was displayed at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the University of New Mexico Art Museum in Albuquerque.
The artist was 24 years old when she created these works and had just acquired her first studio in Lower Manhattan. Six years later she gained international recognition for her groundbreaking post-minimal sculpture, but died at the early age of 34. During her short career, Hesse was in the habit of destroying any works she considered unworthy; this series, rarely shown and unknown, was conserved intact.
“No title,” 1960, oil on masonite. 15 3/4 x 12 inches. The Estate of Eva Hesse, courtesy Hauser & Wirth.
Even though most of the works are small, their intensity is palpable—visceral, in fact. They are painterly paintings, highly gestural, in the mode of the day, and basically neutral in color—grays, browns, whites, blacks and olives, with an occasional rust or pink. The subject is the persona and its many shades, hence the highly appropriate title of the show: Spectres. Configured as single heads or as bodies in pairs or trios, they shed an uneasy, ghostly light.
In terms of making paint seem as flesh, de Kooning is clearly her mentor, but Hesse’s focus is different. While art cannot help but reflect its maker’s psyche, fundamentally, de Kooning paints the world out there, shifting between figure and landscape, whereas Hesse looked inward for her material.
The first painting one encounters in the exhibit shows a frenzied female, immediately identifiable with de Kooning’s facture. Paint is almost viciously stained, piled, splattered and drizzled to define the body’s widely splayed legs, bulbous breasts and vagina, front and center as a gaping square cavity. The woman is consoled by her calmer, duller sister—or mother or other aspect of self—also with gargantuan breasts, who pushes close as if to offer some body heat and solace to one who is literally breaking down.
Another “cavity painting” is a single head with a weighty orange helmet, sad, downturned inklings of eyes and an interior chasm of blood red at the heart area. But this area is not empty; there is something square lodged in there, something quite unnatural.
The largest of these self-portraits, about three feet square, shows a sagging, torqued visage as a slab of sewage gray, offset by a slight hint of life in the rusty lips. Darker gray indicates the eyes but there is no glimmer at all there, so they focus on nothing—they cannot see. In the excellent catalog for the show, curator E. Luanne McKinnon describes blindness as a means of coping when one feels invisible or abandoned. In this series there are a number of sightless, faceless beings.
The gray portrait is the only painting of the group “shown” in Hesse’s lifetime—she brought it to her psychiatrist. From the age of 18 on, Hesse was in psychoanalysis. Her parents’ divorce, suicide and a close experience with the Holocaust set her on shaky ground. In addition, she lived as an aspiring professional in a misogynist society and daily suffered its small and large abuses. Supersensitive and extremely intelligent, Hesse was a feminist years before it became a movement.
In her bride painting, the protagonist sits in a white gown holding a bouquet of flowers. She has breasts but no face and is wholly transparent. Standing next to her is a dark, opaque figure with a face lifting off and moving out, perhaps a sort of determination primed to leave behind that most orthodox of conventions: marriage.
Although Hesse did marry, her diaries recount her need for freedom and insubordination: “I will paint against every rule I or others have invisibly placed.” Another work that appears to further address the male-female relationship is a small ochre monochrome with two upright figures facing each other. They hug opposite edges of the canvas, almost slipping out of the picture. Each emits a plasmatic trajectory in some groping attempt to communicate, and the space between them is filled with erratic horizontal swipes, like gossamer vibrations suggesting a primary interest in the other.
Other paintings of couples are just women, or sexless figures; one seems like a student work, somewhat unfinished, in the manner of one of her teachers, Rico Lebrun; many are two figures facing each other from the far edges of the plane. Hesse would further this format years later in her sculpture with two large, identical, minimal blocks linked by a tangle of cords.
Given the disturbing nature of Hesse’s work here, it is striking that mirth, wit, mischief and comedy are sometimes mentioned when describing her later approach. Perhaps this is reflected in another small ochre piece, which could be called the “fat painting.” A few grand masses—buttocks or stomach or thighs—are delineated by liquid black outlines. There might be two figures, but they are so closely formed that it is perhaps one figure dividing into two, almost suffocating itself as the vast bulges push out into the front and edges of the surface. The flesh expands, almost painfully, like too much food. It reminded me of the bloated ogre in The Rocky Horror Picture Show who inflates until he floats up, looming into the air, threatening until finally exploding into demise.
Munch, Bontecou, Beuys, perhaps Samaras (his subject is “self”), even Tuymans—these are all Hesse’s artistic relatives. But the biggest surprise to me was her skull painting, which I had virtually seen before; it was Basquiat. This motif spans the decades—the centuries—as our very structure from beginning to end. While Hesse’s skull is comprised of full strokes of oil paint that, though rapid, are languorous, Basquiat’s strokes in acrylic are electric and graphically staccatto. Her skull ponders the void with an odd sense of understanding; his skulls shriek into the emptiness as if trying to scare it away.
Not too long after Hesse painted this series, cutting-edge artists no longer wanted to paint—certainly not in a painterly mode. Painting, like the bloated ogre, hyperventilated and died. For two decades, in the ’60s and ’70s, artists concentrated on cultivating other materials.
For me, the most outstanding aspect of this show is apprehending what can only be called The Real Thing: painting as a luscious object in and of itself. In many of these works, Hesse applies the paint wet on wet, allowing for no changes once the image is down. This requires great drawing skill and absolute confidence in one’s original vision while simultaneously allowing for the unintended. Hesse is completely on top of her game here, making this a must-see show and a fascinating foil to de Kooning’s current blockbuster at MoMA.
Spectre
Through Jan. 8, 2012, Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Pkwy, 718-638-5000,
www.brooklynmuseum.org.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Photographic Treasures from the Collection of Alfred Stieglitz.” Oct. 12–Feb. 26, 2012. “Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe.” Oct. 13–Jan. 2, 2012. “A Sensitivity to the Seasons: Summer and Autumn in Japanese Art.” Ends Oct. 23. “Anthony Caro on the Roof.” Ends Oct. 30. “Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures.” Ends Jan. 29, 2012. “Perino del Vaga in New York Collections.” Ends Feb. 5, 2012. “Infinite Jest: Caricature & Satire from Leonardo to Levine.” Ends March 4, 2012, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org.
MoMA PS1: “September 11.” Ends Jan. 9, 2012, 22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens, 718-784-2084, ps1.org.
The Morgan Library & Museum: “Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan.” Oct. 21–Jan. 29, 2012. “Ingres at the Morgan.” Ends Nov. 27. “David, Delacroix, & Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre.” Ends Dec. 31. “Charles Dickens at 200.” Ends Feb. 12, 2012, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008, themorgan.org.
El Museo del Barrio: “The (S) Files 2011.” Ends Jan. 8, 2012, 1230 5th Ave., 212-831-7272, elmuseo.org.
Museum of American Illustration: “Rolling Stone & the Art of the Record Review.” Ends Oct. 22. “Making Faces.” Ends Nov. 23, 128 E. 63rd St., 212-838-2560, societyillustrators.org.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: “Intervals: Nicola López.” Ends Oct. 25. “THE HUGO BOSS PRIZE 2010: Hans-Peter Feldman.” Ends Nov. 2. “Pop Objects & Icons from the Guggenheim Collection.” Ends Feb. 12, 2012, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500, guggenheim.org.
Studio Museum: “Spiral: Perspectives on an African American Art Collective.” Ends Oct. 23. “Evidence of Accumulation.” Ends Oct. 23. “Lyle Ashton Harris: Self/Portrait.” Ends Oct. 23. “as it was, as it could be.” Ends Oct. 23. “Harlem Postcards.” Ends Oct. 23. “StudioSound.” Ends Oct. 23, 144 W. 125th St., 212-864-4500, studiomuseum.org.
