J. Hoberman Reviews 'Eva Hesse'
Had she lived, artist Eva Hesse would have turned 80 this year. But lovely-looking, dark-eyed, and dead at 34, she personifies transitory beauty. So does her groundbreaking work—serial arrangements of biomorphic tubes, webs of latex coated rope, fiberglass stalactites, and wire clouds—which, hell on conservators, seems largely about its own evanescence.
“Eva Hesse was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century,” the curator Elizabeth Sussman declares early on in Marcie Begleiter’s new documentary, named for its subject. Given the brevity of Hesse’s career, one might wish to change “greatest” to “most brilliant” or modify the word “artist” with “American” and “20th century” with “late” but there is no question that Hesse had one of the 20th century’s more compelling life stories.