Art and work and art and life are very connected and my whole life has been absurd. There isn't a thing in my life that has happened that hasn't been extreme - personal health, family, economic situations...absurdity is the key word. - Eva Hesse

Writing helps me coalesce my thinking. It is not an easy task that you get to just check off on the list. Nor does it stay consistent. Sometimes I feel like writing and sometimes I hate it. All writers seem to struggle with these existential questions of meaning and work. I am attracted to simple structures, structures in writing like Robert Johnson’s use of white space in his epic poem Ark, or the straight lines of Mondrian, marks on paper that know who they are. As if lines on paper need personifying. Maybe they do. 

Maybe we would take art more seriously if we knew the process of the artist giving of themselves to us, the viewer. What might it mean to have more empathy toward the artists? I think often we simply look and make a quick judgement if we don’t like or like it. Is it art? Is it valuable? Is it worth my time looking (as if staring at our phones is worth it, too?) I like things that I often don’t like at first glance. I like art that troubles me or cause me to go through an effort to understand. 

No art has always been more troublesome, difficult to access, or brought me more joy than Eva Hesse’s work. This past week at the Guggenheim I saw Eva Hesse Expanded Expansion. This piece once deemed “unviable” (whatever this means) is now installed for the first time in 35 years. Expanded Expansion was created in 1969 out of Fiberglass, polyester resin, latex, and cheesecloth. The materials, oh my! The tattered cheesecloth is unnervingly interesting. Hesse’s influence is great on our perception of the ephemeral, the hard, the infrastructure of our bodies, versus the soft. Her work is cellular. As the Guggenheim writes that the piece “ is a sculptural embodiment of opposites united. Both permanence and deterioration operate in the piece: fiberglass poles—rigid, durable entities—are juxtaposed with fragile, rubber-covered cheesecloth.” Deterioration is often unviable. Hesse knew her works would evolve and change. She had guilt around selling work to collectors. And to say Eva’s career, her art was cut short is unfair to her (She died of a brain tumor at 34). Her work is here in all its deteriorating glory meeting me in the moment. I am so grateful she did the work she did. Hesse accomplished something artists often shoot for and miss, she seized and captured time.

I did not know I needed Benedict Cumberbatch reading Sol LeWitt’s letter to Eva Hesse. Artists need our empathy to do the hard work, and yes, the sometimes uncomfortable labor of noticing. Watch the dramatic reading of the letter and feel the artist reciprocity highlighted there in his words to Eva, that ultimately drove her, and drive us to those who will listen, to ... just do.

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