Constructions and Assemblage
Barbara Chase.
Nevelson's success has encouraged other American women to
become sculptors. Barbara Chase (born
1939),
a prize-winning author who now lives in Paris,
belongs to a generation of remarkable black women who have made
significant contributions to several of the arts at once. She is heir to
a unique American tradition. It is a paradox that whereas black women
never carve in traditional African cultures, in America they found their
first artistic outlet in sculpture. They were attracted to it by the
example set by Harriet Hosmer at a time when abolitionism and feminism
were closely allied liberal causes.
Chase received a traditional training in her native Philadelphia, the
first center of minority artists .
In search of an artistic identity, she then
turned to African art for inspiration. Her monumental sculpture makes an
indelible impression. In Confessions for Myself (fig.
1161) she has conjured up a
demonic archetype of awesome power. Its sources can be found in cast
bronze figures from Benin and in the Senufo tribe's carved wooden
masks, which are sometimes embellished with textiles. From them she
developed her highly individual aesthetic, which utilizes a combination
of bronze that has been painted black and braided fiber to express a
distinctly ethnic sensibility and feminist outlook.
1161. Barbara Chase.
Confessions for Myself.
1972. Bronze, painted black, and black wool,
13.05 m x
1.02 m x
30.5 cm.
University Art
Museum, University of California at Berkeley
Eva Hesse.
A special case is formed by Eva Hesse
(1936-1970). Although her work stands on its own,
she had just begun to hit her stride when her life was cut short by
cancer. Moreover, it is impossible to separate her work from her life,
which is known in considerable detail, thanks to her diaries and many
interviews.
While not a feminist, she has been treated as a heroine
by the women's liberation movement because of her inner and artistic
struggles. In many respects she represented the very prototype of the
feminist artist, one who was later to provide inspiration to others. Her
sculpture, too, defies convenient categories. It began to develop
rapidly only in 1966 as
the result of a stay in Germany, where she was influenced by Joseph
Beuys and his Zero Group.
For her as for Beuys, art had healing powers through its
revelatory function, only they were private rather than social in
nature. Her artistic milieu was nevertheless the New York circle of
Minimalists that included her closest friends. Her work derives its best
features from both, but restates matters in an entirely individual way.
To look at Hesse's sculpture is to see a central mystery unveiled
through its often paradoxical, mythic character. Thus Accession II
(fig. 1162)
has aptly been described as "suggesting a stylistic collision between one of Donald Judd's minimalist
aluminum boxes and Meret Oppenheim's Surrealist fur-covered teacup of
1936." (Compare figs.
1147 and
1135.) Aesthetically it has the
spareness of Minimalist art, but with infinitely richer content, for
Hesse has reinvested her industrial object with personal meaning. It at
once possesses all the enigma of Pandora's box and the piquancy of an
erotic fetish, a quality found throughout her mature work, which is
laden with unmistakable sexual overtones.
1162. Eva Hesse. Accession II.
1967.
Steel and
rubber tubes, 78
x 78 x
78 cm. The Detroit Institute of Arts
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Eva Hesse
Eva Hesse, (born Jan. 11, 1936, Hamburg, Ger.—died May 29,
1970, New York, N.Y., U.S.), German-born U.S. sculptor.
She arrived in New York City with her family in 1939,
fleeing the Nazi regime. She attended the Pratt Institute,
Cooper Union, and Yale University. In 1964 she married and
moved briefly to Germany and began making sculpture,
developing a style featuring sensuous shapes and
unconventional materials (including rubber tubing, synthetic
resins, cord, cloth, and wire). In the 1960s she exhibited
throughout the U.S. and achieved critical acclaim; her work
was sometimes asssociated with Minimalism. In 1969 she
underwent the first of three unsuccessful operations for a
brain tumour. Her influence since her death has been
widespread.
Encyclopædia Britannica
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Eva Hesse. Vertiginous Detour. 1966
Eva Hesse. Untitled
Eva Hesse. Untitled
Eva Hesse. Untitled
Eva Hesse.
Contingent
Eva Hesse. Untitled
Eva Hesse. Untitled
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