Eva Hesse Page #7

A wonderful thing of the '60s,

was, uh, Canal Street technology.

And so, I mean, she got into that.

(CAR HONKING)

HOLT". Canal Street was just a wonderland.

I loved walking up and clown

Canal Street, looking at all the materials.

And often the materials

would lead you to an idea.

HONIG:
It was like, shopping in Tiffany's,

except that Tiffany's

had little rubber things

and you didn't know, What they Were.

ROBERT:
There was a rubber store.

There was stores

that sold old shell casings.

Everything was down there.

It was part of being in Lower Manhattan.

I mean, Lower Manhattan was so great.

Trucks were going by, all the time and,

H had so many wonderful,

stimulating things going on there

that affected all of us, you know?

You know the closest you come to it

for me, now, is Home Depot. (CHUCKLING)

You know, I go in there and it's like,

"Oh, look at all this stuff."

But it's not Canal Street.

No, it isn't. It isn't.

HESSE". Spent morning,

shopping on Canal Street.

So! joined me.

Must have spent $20 to $30.

HESSE". Friday, Canal Street.

Take magnets, try washers.

Two wires and weights.

LEWITT:
She said that she

Wanted to make her Work ucky.

Not yucky, but ucky.

She had to do something with it that,

uh, made it feel good to her.

GRAHAM". Eva was dealing with

materials, that were debased.

They were industrial materials,

that were waste materials.

I think Eva just had

a fascination, maybe with

the kind of junk culture that

you could find in New York.

LEWITT". But, I mean,

she took all these things

and made them so completely,

uh, her own that they lost

all of their junky quality.

LIPPARD:
I can see Eva just sort of

sitting there, with her materials,

almost like they were,

it was another creature,

and working with them.

But not another creature, maybe herself

because they were so self-identified.

I mean, his was where she put

a lot of her anxieties,

was into her art, I think.

I don't want to get too psychology

oriented on this because,

it's very unpopular

now to do that. But...

But with Eva, it's almost impossible

not to think psychologically,

when you know her work,

and her as a person.

HESSE:
Friday, July 28th.

Called Donald Droll until midnight.

ROBERT". Donald Droll was more

or less running Fischbach,

which was such a powerhouse gallery.

And he was very skillful

at recognizing artists.

He had a great eye.

He had a great eye, yeah.

HESSE". Friday evening.

Donald Droll said, if I'm

ready, I can do a show.

I can have the main

large room this spring.

LIPPARD:
And that was a big deal.

It was a huge opportunity.

HONIG:
Eva had gorgeous,

black, long hair.

She symbolically, out all of her hair off.

H was gonna be another time in her life.

H was away from being this wife,

and H was all gonna be about her work.

HESSE:
Friday, March 8th.

Dorothy B. Movie.

Factory for epoxy. Rubber or plastic.

Flexible durability.

GOLDMAN". She was always expanding,

going beyond what she knew.

That was her purpose.

HESSE". Silicone. 120 cos, 20 cos.

Silastex, 120 cos.

SUSSMAN:
A group called

Experiments in Ari and Technology

had come together, to bring artists

into the orbit of people

using new technologies.

Eva Hesse was admitted to the group,

and she attended lectures

in the use of polymers and latex.

HESSE". One, liquid. Two, clear rubber.

Three, sets after 24 hours. Four...

Matter matters.

And I think it's really clear

in Eva's work that,

the material manifestation of the form

comes out of an intense

investigation of the matter.

HESSE". Tuesday, April 30th.

Go to Arco, Canal Street, Aegis.

Aegis Reinforced Plastics

was created specifically to

help artists create

their particular things,

including people like

Bob Morris and Tom Doyle,

and Rob Smithson.

Bob Morris brought Eva in and

showed her what you could do.

How'd fiberglass act,

when it was saturated?

When it was hard, it would

look like it was still soft.

That was one of the good things,

because she liked soft.

I guess that we made a connection and

a couple of months later,

We started working on her pieces.

The first piece I made for Eva,

was cal/ed Repetition Nineteen.

And she showed me some drawings.

Very simple line drawing of a cylinder.

She gave me dimensions and 19 of them.

We made up these cylinders,

coated them with fiberglass,

and lei them harden up.

And then we had

to peel out the newspaper.

She comes all the way out,

to Staten Island

and, um, and she's horrified.

I mean, beyond horrified.

They were just too perfect.

So I told her, Look, you make

the buckets out of paper mache.

I will make them exactly, the way

"you've made them, in fiberglass."

So she set about to do it again.

And this time, with her hand,

she did something to each piece,

and it was not cylinders.

For her, the specificity

was personal, H was physical,

and was her touch, her way.

JOHNS". A couple weeks later,

she comes out.

She's got these 19 buckets

and they're bigger, now.

And so we made these buckets,

coated them with the resin,

put them on the table,

put the light on and bing!

They were just like, this gorgeous thing.

She was ecstatic.

I mean, this was just the

best thing she'd ever seen.

At that point, we were a team.

It was just let's do this,

and we're gonna make sculptures

and she was terribly excited.

She said, "Why not come over

and live with me?" So I did.

She had a show coming up

at the Fischbach.

And so we would wake up in

the morning and H was,

"Let's do the art."

And we'd work all day and all night,

until we'd just collapse.

We made a session,

which was basically a box

that we covered on the outside,

with a very thick layer of fiberglass.

And then we would drill holes

through this piece of fiberglass,

with 29,000 holes, we made in that.

And I helped her put

the tubes in this thing.

GOLDMAN". Accession,

it's called, the tubes?

Never seen anything so sexual

and fantastic in my whole life.

And Eva just would sit there,

and boom, and boom, and boom

in a meticulous, methodical rhythm.

In they went.

When you put your head inside,

you couldn't hear anything, outside.

And of course, she lived on the Bowery.

And H was noisy, and there's drunks

and there's yelling and

there's all kinds of noise.

You couldn't hear a thing.

H was wonderful.

You'd go in there and H was

just like being in a cave.

Her feeling was that the art

was the artifact of the process.

The art was in the making,

the artifact was what was left over.

It was just this wonderful

time of just, creating art.

And I was madly in love with her.

Absolutely just, um...

I don't think she was

madly in love with me.

I know she was infatuated

with me, that's for sure.

There was no question about that.

Uh, but she was in love with her art.

HESSE:
Tuesday, June 4th. Aegis.

Rubber. Four pints together. Tube plastic.

Give Doug this.

Sunday, July 7th.

Organic and inorganic polymers.

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