The unrest and struggles that arose from national crisis in the United States in the 1960’s allowed artists some form of “aesthetic liberation” and to take up a voice about the “nature and limits of art itself.”  This freedom provoked new thinking in the discourse on art and some of the developing movements. Eva Hesse, a prominent German-born American sculptor, was active in the New York art scene at a pivotal time for both women and sculptors. In and era dominated by the simplicity of form stressed in Minimalism, Hesse managed to maintain a minimalist style, while questioning the idioms of the movement and instilling a personal and painterly quality, reminiscent of abstract expressionism, in her works. Contingent, in particular, depicts the culmination of her explorations into the boundaries between painting and sculpture, contradictions and her view of beauty and the absurd.

            Born into a Jewish family is concentration camp Germany in 1936, her childhood was riddled with trauma. After her families escape to New York, her parents divorced and her mothers fell into severe depression, which led to her eventual suicide. Hesse’s dark and expressive sensibility in her work that derived from her past was contrasted with her romantic belief  in “the redemptive quality of art,” which gave her work a humanistic quality uncharacteristic of other minimalist works. After graduating with her Masters from Yale University in 1959, she met Tom Doyle a “more mature and developed artist” whom she married in 19619 and together they moved to Ruhr, in West Germany, to, in 1964. Hesse had been struggling for years with her art, plagued by the “atmosphere defined by the Holocaust” that she felt upon her return to her native Germany. Her attempt to find her artistic and creative niche were convoluted by the questions that  “women were beginning to ask”  about their identity as the feminist movement began to emerge. She “fought to achieve recognition at a time when the art world acknowledge few women”, and when sculpture, in particular, was seen as a male form of expression.

It wasn’t until Doyle suggested that she experiment with materials lying around the factory where they lived, that she found a love for string and chord. She started a series of relief works where she literally translated the lines from her drawings onto masonite panels. Shortly after their return to New York, Hesse and Doyle’s marriage collapsed and Hesse was freed from her husbands shadow.

            With the relief works as a starting point in sculpture, Hesse discovered “her mature vocabulary” and toyed with different materials and Minimalist formal devices such as repetition.  Her works “carried an air or mirth and jokiness and an unmistakable whiff of eroticism”, which allowed her pieces a feeling of humanism  not typical of Minimalism, since, according to Jeanne Siegel, she never  “fleshed out the exactitude” required for the movement.  Hesse was also influenced by Anti-form, a movement announced in a 1968 article in Artforum by Robert Morris, known for informal installations18 and “random pilling” and “loose stacking” which rejected and criticized the form of minimalism.

Painting, the medium in which she was originally trained, always remained the strongest influence in her work. Her sculptures remained very frontal and often were  “dependent on the wall,” whether it was hanging on the wall such as Metronomic Irregularity 111  which is a mounted sculpture or in Accretion which consists of  50 fiberglass and polyester resin tubes leaning against a wall.  Expanded Expansion is dependent on the wall in such a way that it is a screen-like, wall structure. She also remained very concerned with the surface of her works, playing with texture and luminosity, constructing things in layers, sometimes binding and wrapping in an obsessive, often labor intensive manner.  Ultimately, however, it was the “intrinsic qualities” of the material that “conveyed meaning” . She experimented and explored, letting the material take its form, similar to the painting process of abstract expressionism.  Her works showed the process of things being transformed so that “painting and sculpture can no longer be neatly distinguished.” Her experimentation led to the feeling that her works create “tension between geometric and organic forms” and explore contradictions and opposites, enjoying the absurd that arises from the juxtapositions she creates.

In April of 1969, Eva Hesse collapsed and was rushed to hospital. 28 It was discovered that she had a brain tumor. Over the following year, she underwent three unsuccessful operations and became increasingly ill. Contingent, one of her last five pieces, embodies her view on art, beauty, material and process. In an interview with Cindy Nemser in 1970 Hesse explains how she “ started the piece before I got sick, which was last year.”  The piece was on the cover, in full color, of Artforum in May of 1970, the same month that Eva Hesse died.  The work consists of eight banner-like strips of cheesecloth, covered on the top and bottom with reinforced fiberglass, and latex in the middle section. The latex is pulled taut between the weight of the end pieces as all the pieces hang in a row, spaced apart, perpendicular the wall. It was completed by friends, as Hesse was too ill to complete it herself, and she supervised from her bed.       

Contingent brings to mind layers of skin, or bandages, with both the texture and colour. In this way, the piece maintains a feeling of being organic, which contrasts the formal and minimalist elements of the work.  Something seems haunting, yet familiar – as if each hanging cloth holds a similar tension and presence as a human  body.

The particular choice of materials also speaks to the presence that this work holds. Latex has a shelf life of about six months before it starts to deteriorate, change colour, and eventually become fragile and brittle.  According to her Catalog Raisonne “she was very aware that it was temporary….She would say that it was an attribute. Everything was for the process – a moment in time, not meant to last.” This creates a contrast in the work – the tension between the extreme durability of the fiberglass next to the ephemeral and temporary use of latex. She knew that life was not permanent, and did not feel that art should be either. “Absurdity” she felt, was “the key word. It has to do with contradictions and oppositions”.

Artist Jackie Winsor “felt that there was a quality in the color and texture of the surface” that seemed to carry an “emotional pitch that was very poetic and haunting” and created more of an ambience. It speaks to an “extremely personal” reach of experience that is “beyond or beneath speech,” and its authority is derived from its originality. Hesse’s concern seems to be with the “condition of the edge” – she is not focused on the boundaries within a type of work, but rather with the edges and lines that separate painting from drawing, allowing this work to be neither and both. The work feels both beautiful and repulsive, a border she enjoyed to tempt while playing with space and  intrusive abilities of edges. She had hoped to “get to non-art, non connotative, non anthromorphic, non geometric, non, nothing” and wondered “how to achieve by not achieving? How to make by not making?.”

            While Hesse never touched on topics of revolution or politics of the world that surrounded her in her work, nor did her experience with the Holocaust, nor her relationships with the men in her life ever seep into her pieces. Issues of gender roles can rarely be seen, nor are any blatant opinions or messages made clear. What comes across, rather, is her belief in the absolute absurdity of life, which she expresses in her joy of playing with extreme opposites and contradictions. She was able to change the view of women in art, sculpture, and shifted the perception of Minimalism.

“No one can see the exhibition in the same way as it would have been seen in 1968”. Not only does the piece appear different as it ages, with discolorations and a complete change in the experience of the work, but also what it represents no longer exists. It “showed that repetition, the grid, scale” all formal aspects of this piece as well as formal aspects of Minimalism, thought to be a cold, logical and mathematic take on art “did in fact have evocative powers that echoed our experience of the world and our bodies”.  By allowing her experiences, her childhood, her rocky marriage, the anxiety that plagued her, and finally, her diagnoses, seep into her work, she added a personal, emotional element to a style or art that was never meant to have one.  Minimalist sculptor, Carl Andre wrote that “perhaps I am thee bones of the body of sculpture and perhaps Richard Serra is the muscle, but Eva Hesse is the brain and nervous system extending far into the future”.  

We all know, deep down, that a massive environmental and humanitarian crisis is upon us. But it is not a cause for hand-wringing and spreading anxiety and fear – rather it is a call to action. Action like the Appledore Festival, whose theme this year was 'earth', and which brought us all together in a great celebration of earth, environment, art, people, spirit. I was very happy to be a part of it all.

Earth Dreaming: the Installation

It started quietly on the Thursday morning, but by the end of the day there were about eight people working on the piece at the same time with intense concentration. I began to wonder whether it would get finished much too early. Plans B and C formed themselves in my head. I love working this way – the excitement of working in public and a touch of uncertainty more than compensated for the tedious hours spent working out the original design and measurements, and getting it drawn out. Not to mention the week or two spent getting large quantities of stones washed and dried.

Next morning, I knew in fact that my timing was exactly right. I saw that this first central section had some fairly large easily covered areas of red stone – and the central design itself needed quite a lot of adjusting and fine-tuning for maximum effect. The remainder of the 4-day festival settled down into a rhythmic pattern. People came in waves, interspersed by quiet periods when I was able to refurbish boxes of stones, progress the design and take photos. 

 What I remember most clearly are people's reactions: their intake of breath as they entered the room, then slowly becoming drawn into the work itself - sitting or standing quietly around the edge, or helping to make it grow.  

I had previously prepared the design, inspired by (not imitating) the art of cultures closely integrated with the earth. The idea was to use patterns and symbols that had meaning for us here at this moment. The impact of the work depended upon precision of geometry, and it was wonderful to see people of all ages and types slowing down and sitting together, carefully placing one stone at a time. I was amazed at the accuracy and delicacy that quite small children were able to place the stones. It made me realise how much we lose as we grow up through childhood, in terms of dexterity and sensitivity.

The large yellowish outer ring was deceptively awkward to lay, because its larger pieces created the temptation to pour on the stones heavy-handedly, making unattractive ridges and valleys, or else leave gaps between individual stones. The final ring, around the edge of the piece consisted of five narrow rows of colour, and was particularly tricky, taking a lot of patience from a number of visitors. 

Nearly everyone I spoke to commented that their experience of 'Earth Dreaming' was relaxing and therapeutic. Like much of my work, it was deliberately temporary, drawing attention to the transient nature of life. Many, when they learned it would be destroyed at the end of the Festival, were at first taken aback, but came to realise that not everything has to be permanently 'set in stone'. Others were completely comfortable with the fact, and worked with dedication right to the end.

Amazing picture on Space & Culture...please, take a seat!

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….heute schon Kunst. Die hyper-zeitgenössische Kunst ist auf Mallorca angekommen. Das Foto zeigt das gewachsene Verständnis für Skulpturen, die nicht den klassischen Entwürfen folgen. Auch hier zeigt sich wieder die subtile Vorreiterrolle von uns, horten wir doch schon seit Jahren Meisterwerke der zeitgenössischen Kunst in unseren Finca-Hintergärten.

Doch um die Inselmetropole weiter fit zu machen für moderne Reflektionen der Realität(-en), wurde vor einiger Zeit eine konzertierte Aktion gestartet. In Zusammenarbeit mit der Art Cologne, die sich von der "Lifestyle-City" Palma frisches Blut in ihren traditionellen Adern wünscht, wurde eine Kunstmesse in Palma veranstaltet, die nach einem nächtlichen Brainstorming den fantastisch-kreativen Namen "Art Cologne Palma de Mallorca" bekam. Branding kann schon sehr langweilig sein ab und an.

Und weil es nachts so schön ist, gabs dann auch die Nacht der Kunst, die "Nit del Art". Wie jedes Jahr stand das Volk sich gegenseitig in den Museen auf den Füssen und in den Galerien wurde noch länger getrunken als sonst. Ein richtiges Juwel war aber die parallel stattfindende JAM ART, die sich dem Thema zeitgenössische Kunst weniger mainstreamig anäherte.

Die Art Cologne fand dann passenderweise in der alten Abfertigungshalle des Flughafens statt, wohl um die Anreise möglicher potenter Tagesgäste so effizient wie möglich zu gestalten. Bzgl. repräsentativer Präsentationsorte müssen wir uns ja leider noch gedulden - aber zum Thema Palacio de Congresos schreibe ich demnächst getrennt.

Am Ende gab jede Menge zufriedene Galeristen und faire Presse. Und einige Käufer gab's es auch, insbesondere und ein wenig unerwartet auch viele Inselansässige. Merke, auch auf Mallorca fühlen man sich ein bisschen Bobo.

Bezogen auf oben abgebildetes Kunstwerk kann es natürlich auch sein, dass der sturmgeschädigte Hausbesitzer einfach ahnte, dass der Orkan der letzten Woche nur ein fulminater Auftakt eine Veranstaltungsreihe der Wettergötter war. Die Hinwendung zur modernen Kunst empfehlen wir auch an dieser Stelle dem Blitz, der ja in den letzten Epochen doch einen argen Imageverlust erlitten hat. Sein englischer Bruder Flash hat diesen Schritt ja schon Ende der Sechziger getan

Wie auch immer - Mit dererlei Vorahnung sagte der Sturmgeschädige sich wohl in praktischer ortsüblicher Manier: „tranquilo, lass mal liegen“.

Dennoch - temporäre Kunst zählt auch.

nachgereicht: Dass das mit moderner Kunst und Kirche auch anders geht als bei Schrulli-Kardinal Meisner, zeigt die Kathedrale von Palma, in der Miquel Barceló seine 15 Tonnen Terracotta zur "Speisung der Fünftausend" aufgebaut hat. Ich habe vor einem Jahr oder so eine echt spannende Doku über die Erschaffung dieses Mega...Dings gesehen. Der Mann hat die Figuren von hinten aus den riesigen Terracotta-Platten herausgeboxt. Um nicht nur dieses moderne Meisterwerk zu besichtigen, sondern auch die größte Rosette der Welt (Durchmesser 12,55m) in ihrer ganzen Farbenpracht zu bestaunen, empfiehlt Karin Schweighofer in ihrem PalmaBlog eine Besichtigung direkt nach der Öffnung morgens um 10 Uhr, weil dann das Sonnenlicht die Rosette an der Ostfront der Apsis bestens beleuchtet.