Eva Hesse Page #8

Chain polymers.

HOLT". She rubberized fabric, cheesecloth.

Thai was discovering a new process.

It wasn't something that was

already there in the world.

HESSE:
Monday, July 8th.

New work. Rubber, fiberglass.

I let her know that plastics

and rubber are fugitive.

Rubber will last, the best,

ten, 15 years.

And H gradually starts cracking

and H starts turning to dust.

She said, "Good.

Let them worry about it."

Talking about the museum people.

"So what'? I want what

the effect is now."

HESSE:
Sunday, October 27th.

Sans, complete, fini.

Turned out great.

Saturday, November 16th. Show.

HESSE". I would like the work

to be non-work.

To find its way beyond

my preconceptions.

To go beyond what I know, and can know.

H is something.

H is nothing.

TIMPANELLI:
I Went to the opening.

Ah! And I'd been looking

at art since I was just a kid.

I saw work that

I had never seen before.

And yet, as absolutely

original as it was,

it was incredibly

reflective of our time

and of all time, and of real feeling.

SEROTA". Eva's work arsed

her new sensibility.

H was distinctive.

H was her own.

Fragile, beautiful, tentative.

It was all those things that sculpture,

was not supposed to be.

HESSE:
"Eva Hesse.

This is a first one-man show

of uncommon interest.

Ms. Hesse's work is located uneasily,

but interestingly between two poles.

The realm of highly rationalized form,

and the realm of

surrealist dream objects.

We had about eight or nine shows,

we wanted to see on that day.

And the last one on the list

turned out to be Eva Hesse.

And I walked into

the Fischbach Gallery,

and I suddenly saw,

the most beautiful things

Pd ever seen and the most fascinating.

TONY GANZ". There was

this extraordinary work.

And Eva herself is there

in the back room.

And she looks not unlike my sister Kate,

a fact which is not lost on him.

MOTOR". I was charmed

and fell for her immediately.

Thought she was marvelous.

He decides to do something

he hasn't done in many years,

which is to buy some work.

JOHNS". When the Ganzs

bought some pieces,

she came back to the studio,

and she said,

"They're gonna buy some of my pieces.

They collect Picassos, also.

"That's all, me and Picasso." (LAUGHS)

It was just like, "Wow!"

She would come to dinner

rather frequently,

and we always had a lovely evening.

HESSE". Sold four more drawings.

Whitney Spring Show,

TIME Magazine arts section.

She was one of the artists in New York.

She was the only woman, basically,

that was in the group.

She was one of the boys.

She went into

an extraordinary work mode.

I mean, she was

extraordinarily productive

and beginning to emerge,

and get responses from places.

HESSE:
So much is going on.

L had lots of success.

I'm asked to be in so many shows,

I can't keep up.

In October, I'll go to Europe,

have one man show at

Gallery Ricka in Cologne.

For March, I'm preparing

work for the Whitney.

Show includes

Carl Andre, Robert Morris,

Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra and me.

JOHNS". She was getting

a lot of headaches.

She would get dizzy

and couldn't really function.

She'd be squinting and just

this severe pain.

And I kept on saying to her, "Look,

you've got to see a doctor.

And she just avoided H.

LIPPARD:
{remember the night,

and we were all there with Eva,

and we realized that

something really was wrong.

Her headache was just terrible.

Previously, the psychiatrist

had said H was physical,

and the physical doctors

had said H was psychiatric.

And she was very ridden by anxieties,

and so H seemed possible,

that was what was going on.

But at that point,

she was really in pain

and I think we figured out,

that this was

more than we thought it was.

(AMBULANCE SIREN WAILS)

HESSE:
April 10th. I was

admitted to New York Hospital,

to be examined, tested.

CHARASH:
She was therefor days,

and they couldn't find anything Wrong.

And they did a spinal tap

and thank God.

She would have died that day.

HESSE". My tumor was so enlarged,

H had no free space to move.

So H was tipping my brain over.

There Wasn't much time.

Saw images, color flashes.

Very, very beautiful.

Was not afraid.

Wanted to touch,

connects with those with me.

I was very in touch with them,

and they with me.

I spoke.

L smiled. I fantasized.

I had visions. I loved.

I could not speak enough.

I saw faces. I saw love, happiness.

OHARASH:
She was operated and I come in

there, I can really still see it.

And she's sitting up in bed,

bandaged around the head,

and she's feeling fantastic.

And she just, now,

the headache was gone

and she wasn't in pain,

and she felt great.

And she said, "How lucky I am,

they've got it all

"and I'm just so lucky."

HESSE:
I think back to Where it all began.

I was so HI.

I had signs, but I would

not recognize them.

One can deny anything.

People thought when she got sick,

that the materials were to blame.

I mean, there were other

people working with latex,

but she Was, like I said,

really into her materials.

So she was probably breathing

them and, you know,

tasting them, even. Who knows'?

JOHNS". I mean this is

the beginning of fiberglass.

But H really is not that toxic,

and her tumor was far too large

to even think that,

that small amount of exposure

that she had,

gave her that brain tumor.

WAPNER:
I often try to tease out,

was it the resins she worked with,

or was H just some genetic DNA fluke?

We'll never know.

HESSE". In the last year

and now, since my illness,

I just Want to live, let go,

call the past, past

and have another try.

My God, anyone who knows my history,

who knows me, knows I deserve it.

H's true.

There's never been a time or

scene that qualifies as norm.

Extremes on every side.

TIMPANELLI:
She stayed

with me in Woodstock.

She came with her bag of paints.

It was right after. She didn't have the

energy to go back to

the studio to be alone

and to do sculpture.

So, she was going to do

these paper paintings.

HESSE:
Today is the third

day I feel a little better,

a little stronger,

a little more hopeful,

a little less sickness.

How grateful I am. I have much to do.

TIMPANELLI:
We got up early

in the morning.

We had muesli, a cup of tea,

and then we'd go to work.

And the work was on the porch.

And it started to rain,

and it never stopped.

But we worked every day.

I had never worked on art like that.

We just devoted ourselves to working

and she to making these paintings,

these beautiful paper paintings.

She scrapes through them,

she made lines.

SUSSMAN:
She was layering

on washes of paint in the same

delicate way that she

had handled her latex,

until the point where the

consistency of the material

on the paper became right for her.

They have the ambition of

paintings and they have been

compared to the late works

of Mark Rothko.

TIMPANELLI:
We'd also

sometimes go shopping.

And she bought these worms,

once, fistfuls.

And I asked her, I said,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes