The Works of Eva Hesse
Hesse was a young German artist who was born in 1936 and died in 1970 with only 34 years. Her sculptures and paintings were fragile and with disintegrating beauty which was the reason as to why she earned herself the description a minimalist artist. She immigrated to the United States in 1938 where her mother committed suicide in 1945. Hesse pursued an arts education degree at Yale University under the supervision of Josef Albers. She later created an astonishing body of art in the ten years leading to her demise from a brain tumor. Her art was an icon for many feminist artists in the early 1970s having remained an enigma up to the time of her death (Hatoum, M. & Renton, 2006, p. 3).
Hesse’s earlier drawings were amoeba like forms, with impressive color that was an abstract art, yet untypical and hard to place in customary context. Each of the drawings carried the name ’untitled’ and disclosed Hesse’s desire not to be understood in relation to other abstract artists. The art expresses Hesse’s desire to undo established and conventional forms of painting and sculpture and establish her own genre.
Her art was anti-biographical in a way excluding any imagery as to her own woes. She escaped from Nazi, Germany, and underwent the typical immigrant experience in the U.S. One of her pieces that are assumed a self-portrait depicts a young girl with an oversize face with her head leaning to the right. It is a product of heavy grey strokes with the hair shown in thick dripping yellow paint. The face sits on small shoulders alluding to the burdens of the world. The eyes are asymmetrical and appear to be piercing in grey matter. This painting was among a few other paintings of the young and melancholic girl, representing a child like style that became too personal and revealing in the artistic sense. In this regard, she gradually abandoned it (Hinshelwood, D., 1991, p. 4).
From here, her progression was characterized by a desire to be a more analytical artist who was more interested in the process of issues rather than what they represented. However, from her earlier works, Hesse propagated a detailed focus on the eye, the gaze and the look. These paintings were black and grayish and were done in ink. They seem to show a wish to look out at the world while exploring the depths of her troubled person.
The eye played the double role of seeing the world and transmitting the internal state of the person, depicted with variations in the weight of the gaze. These are deductions as to Hesse’s conflict in the subject of the relationship between her art and her life. In some instances, her opinion was that the inner person, life and art are intertwined elements, yet on another level, she rationalized that art and life cannot be combined (Gleick, j., 1987, p. 5).
The new style employed vibrant colors with geometric forms, creating brightly colored drawings of unique shapes and squiggles. Stark contrast is evident creating the impression of a deeply disarrayed world. An apparent willingness to face her inner chaos is evident in this phase of works also indicating an intense energy. Some of the drawings appear to be shattered glass, while the chaotic patterns seem to create a mosaic landscape, yet others look like the aftermath of an explosion.
These chaoses then gradually take the order of recognizable containers and repetitive patterns that create a childish atmosphere. These progressively become more geometric and mechanical seemingly forming body parts whereby penises, breasts and legs are discernible from a picture puzzle form. However, not a trace of sexual charge is evident. From this style, it seems as if Hesse is reacquainting herself with sexual organs at her own pace just as a child gradually unearths sexual differences (Bion, W., 1982, p. 1).
By 1965, Hesse had turned to large-scale sculptures the first of which was ‘Ringaround Arosie’. Made with pencil, acetone, varnish, enamel paint and electrical wires covered with cloth on paper-mache and Masonite; Hesse described it as ‘breast and pennis’ despite the sculpture depicting a small breast sitting on a large protruding breast. There are two perspectives to this sculpture: that the smaller circle on top is the penis with the bigger one as the breast; that both circles are breasts with protruding penises.
Hesse wanted to control the play of reference and gender in her works as is apparent in this sculpture. Breast and penis forms became a major approach in Hesse’s imagery. At one point, her minimalist colleagues pushed her to adopt a more sexual approach; which she did not and was actually infuriated with the suggestion. This was an apparent command on the use of female and male organ imagery not rather than an objection to its use.
Her use of the breast, testicle and penis imagery points to her self-sexual ratifications maybe using the art to free herself from this confusion. Similar themes to the ‘Ringaround Arosie’; where breasts are invaded by piercing penises;’ are evident in several of other of her works for instance: in ‘An Ear in a Pond’ and ’2 in 1’ where the sexual imagery depicts the organs as hard, un-giving, stark, void, menacing and vulnerable. In ‘An Ear in a Pond’, the breasts are leaking while in ‘2 in 1’ they are pale, hollow and threatening creating the feel of gender tension.
Some inferences came up from the relationship between her parents, where she depicts flattened breasts and fierce, powerful and piercing penises. These three pieces are the best examples of her feminist works (Meltzer, D., 1973, p. 5).
The Works of Mona Hatoum
Mona Hatoum was a Palestinian whose Parents were forced into exile in Lebanon before her birth. She forced herself into exile in England on the breakout of the Lebanese war. Hatoum mainly dealt with body art.He started with performance pieces before he moved to mechanical installations. Her mechanical works employed video, light and sound. Her art represented confrontations themes, which covered issues like violence and oppression. In addition, she concluded that body is resistant and vulnerable. Her work is analyzed in the context of her ethnicity and geopolitical background; having emigrated from the Middle East, her ratifications of the role of the body led her to believe that there existed a separation of the body from the person in contradiction to her experiences (Garb, T., 1998, p. 3)
Hatoum’s art is a product of her avant-garde education and her Middle Eastern experience; seemingly inspired by post-World War II sculptors, surrealism, minimalism and post-minimalism, arte povera, post-conceptual video, film and performance.
Her political affiliations at Art school also greatly shaped her work, especially the affiliation she had with feminist groups. This inspired her to look for power structures particularly using the deconstructive tools of feminism to examine class issues, imperialism and racism. Her work’s inspiration was her affiliations to the oppressed groups, affected by the imbalances of sociopolitical power. Employing varied media in combinations to convey her ideas, with a focus on the body, physicality and embodiment, her initial works were performances aimed at breaking down the mind body disjunction that she found so pervasive in the western world.
The immediacy and presence of body-centered performance was a perfect avenue for her to voice her political concerns that were the major content of her early work. She did not depict any specific situation, instead using her body as a metaphor for oppressed masses everywhere. The logic of the pieces was to involve the audience so that they could identify and empathize with the downtrodden. An instance of these performances is the 1983 performance named ‘Under Siege’ where she got into a transparent container filled with clay and repeatedly slipped, fell and picked up her for seven hours. In the course of the performance, she bit desperately at the plastic lining with radio static and sounds of news broadcasts in the background (Cameron, D., 1997, p. 4).
This and all her other performances was staged to portray several main themes: barrier between her and the audience to show displacement; transitions between dichotomies; and vulnerability expressed through nudity and containment; and masochist acts. Hatoum seeking to achieve a level of sophistication albeit with subtlety followed this phase of intense performance. She chose art whereby she made installations with emphasis on their spatial construction.
In one of these, named ‘Untitled’ in 1992, she constructed a white walled corridor with stainless steel wire defining the interior pathways. The visitor walks through and notices thin horizontal wires at an ankle level on the left side. A move to the right did not provide the sought safety since on that side were wires at groin level. Both of these wires closed in narrowing the passage as one proceeded. A door leading to another room could have been a safety option but in that room were wires at neck level (Harper, p., 1998, p. 186).
Conventional minimalism provides space for contemplation; but Hatoum’s approach was to use minimalist aesthetic combined with painful objects to achieve the effect of creating physical tension in the viewer. The associations that come to the fore in this scenario are imprisonment, harm, torture, entrapment, spatial dislocation in reference to Hatoum’s threatened background (Rogoff, I., 2002, p. 1).
Feminism and the two artists
Both artists used art to express feminist theme. This occurred in different periods but in both scenarios, there were pressing gender imbalances that connect to the geo-political issues of the time. Hesse painted in the 1960s a time when there were gender issues in the states regarding the role of the woman in business and politics. Her strongest feminist pieces were in 1965 whereby her style evolved from the expression of the troubles of her background as an emigrant to expression of wider oppression and social issues. She used male and female body organs to depict gender conflict issues.
Hatoum’s works were in the 1980’s and the 1990’s is a time in which the world’s attention was on the Middle East. The political conflict brought out not only ethnic and racial conflict but also gender oppression embodied in the region’s culture. She used body art starting with performances then moving on to construction of installations.
Similarly, both Hatoum and Hesse were emigrants as exiles of oppressive regimes; the Nazi in Hesse’s case and the religious oppression of the Middle East in Hatoum’s case. They also botched stated out with the expression of their personal struggles progressing to vociferation of wider issues that included gender imbalances. This occurred at a particular phase of their art careers, with Hesse adopting the geometric mechanical approach and Hatoum progressing from body performances.
Their works though differing in genre were characterized by unrestricted independence. The main differences were to do with the time frame as explained before.In addition, Hesse was a painter and sculptor while Hatoum was a body artist; Hesse’s art seems to express her inner conflict based on the effects of social injustice while Hatoum tried to draw the audience into a state of empathy that could possibly inspire action while not exactly expressing her misgivings on oppression issues. Both artists were inspired by minimalist abstractness and they seem to have an affinity for non-conventional materials in their work, something that added to the desired effect of their pieces.
Hesse style also progressed to installations similar to Hatoum’s style though hers employed ropes and strings as the main prop as an indication of confusion and despair while Hatoum employed spatial aesthecy obstructed with painful objects to allude to inevitable oppression; and a lot of space to offer an opportunity for contemplation on the issues.
Conclusion
The main issues in both artists’ cases were broad social political grievances touching on gender politics. While Hesse was inspired by a deeper ratification of the evils she experienced, Hatoum was more outspoken and broadly inspired having been into political activism and feminism in England. These were especially rampant in the conservative Thatcher era.
Reference List
Bion, W. R., 1982. Transformations. Abingdon: Fleetwood Press.
Cameron, D., 1997. The Poetics of Uncovering: Mona Hatoum in and out of Perspective. Chicago: The Museum of Contemporary Art.
Garb, T., 1997. Mona Hatoum. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art.
Gleick, J., 1987. Chaos: Making a New Science. London: Penguin Press.
Harper, P., 1998. Visceral Geometry: Works of Mona Hatoum. Newyork: Art in America.
Hatoum, M., & Renton, A., 2006. Mona Hatoum. Newyork: White Cube.
Hinshelwood, R.D., 1991. A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought. London: Free Association.
Lippard, L., 1992. Eva Hesse. New York: New York University Press.
Meltzer, D., 1973. Sexual States of the Mind. Pertshirr: Clunic Press.
Rogoff, I., 2002. Geography’s Visual Culture. London: Routledge.