I actually bought an artforum, a magazine i love to hate, except that they print good articles. In the most recent issue was a 1973 interview between Lucy Lippard, Nancy Holt, and Robert Smithson about Eva Hesse’s work while Lippard was writing a monograph on her. I have such a hunger for conversation about Hesse recently, i didn’t know much about her until a few months ago when i read Encountering Eva Hesse, but since then i’ve been kind of obsessed. There’s a lot there with her. There’s a lot going on now that she should be here to work out, a lot of things after minimalism that i would have liked to see her grapple with. The article. I think whenever someone is talking about another artist they end up saying more about themselves, and are only peripherally addressing the actual work, a condition for living in the body we’re given. Smithson said a lot about himself, responding to what he saw as bondage fantasies in her work. I can see where he’s coming from, but no way do even the corporeal rope-wrapped balloons have to do with S/M. I see containment, i see issues of breaking out of prescribed boundaries, but the Freudian interpretation feels grossly off, and a little shallow.Most interesting to me was how they all agreed that Eva Hesse hated the landscape, didn’t enjoy even being outdoors, and noticably less so in a rural or semi-rural environment. That is striking to me, who relates to her work strongly and who viscerally needs the land, needs the idea of it, the fact of it. Part of what i identify with her is wrapped up in biological/organic forms, to find that she brought all of that out of herself in an enclosed urban space is fucking remarkable. It’s enough to think about for days.
On that note, a small experiment: beginning on Saturday, i will try as much as possible to eliminate my cultural consumption. I’d love to do two weeks but will be satisfied if i make one or one and a half. This means no books, no museum visiting, no internet surfing (i’ll still check my email but that’s it), no newspapers, magazines, movies, or (gulp) music. At work the music’s on constantly so i can’t help that, or the trillions of ads me and my fellow new yorkers are subjected to on the daily. But otherwise i’m going to try to really delve into myself, into the meaty underneath-ness, really sit down and think and breathe. I’ve seen so much in the past few months, so much art, read so many amazing things, and i feel i’m carrying around these half-digested thoughts that are getting in the way of newer ones. Hopefully i’ll have the courage to get them out.
