Untitled

During a year’s residency in Kettwig, Germany, in 1965, Eva Hesse made a series of mechanical drawings based on the enormous abandoned factory that she and her husband, sculptor Tom Doyle (b. 1928), used as a studio, even as it was being dismantled. Surrounded by broken machinery, Hesse rendered mechanical, suggestive forms in ink and color as she searched for her artistic voice. In these two studies human and machine parts coalesce in a schematic drawing as fantastical as it is clear. Blue, red, and yellow enliven careful drawings of machinery that also resembles phalluses, joints, and viscera—blurring the boundary between body and machine, drawing and diagram. While the drawings include more detail than the sculptural relief, they have in common the oval shape. When making these drawings, Hesse wrote to artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) about her doubts as an artist and her “clean, clear but crazy like machines … real nonsense” drawings. He responded, “Do more. More nonsensical more crazy more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever—make them abound with nonsense. Try and tickle something inside you, your ‘weird humor.’ … Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make … your own world.” Hesse continued her work, transforming the mechanical detritus around her into constructs of her “own world.” Her time in Kettwig led her on a distinctive path, paved with “weird humor” and “real nonsense.

Amy Rahn

More artworks by Eva Hesse in the exhibition