Eva Hesse’s diaries
Eva Hesse’s diaries
“I SOMETIMES WONDER WHAT HAPPENS TO ALL THOSE HOURS IN A DAY.”
Welcome to the latest issue of Subtle Maneuvers. Last week, we visited the Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi’s country villa. This week: the German-born American sculptor Eva Hesse.
Eva Hesse (1936–1970)
Last Friday was the 50th anniversary of Hesse’s death, at age 34, of a brain tumor. By then she had been making art for more than a decade, but it was only in the last five years of her tragically short life that Hesse began working with latex, fiberglass, and plastic to build the brilliantly eccentric, playful, and creepy sculptures that made her one of the most distinctive and influential artists of the mid-to-late 1960s.
In 2016, Hauser & Wirth published Hesse’s diaries in a beautiful clothbound paperback volume. They are not an easy read, filled as they are with the artist’s self-doubts and anxieties—“Everything for me personally is glossed with anxiety,” she wrote in 1965—the frustrations of her short-lived marriage to a fellow sculptor, and her almost constant struggle to find and stick to a productive work schedule. And yet it is also inspiring to watch Hesse persevere in spite of all the obstacles in her way. Below are some of the entries that jumped out at me; I hope they’ll resonate with some of you as well.