Eva Hesse
American, born Germany, 1936–1970
Hang Up
INV-7139
Eva Hesse
American, born Germany, 1936–19701966
20th Centuryconstruction/mixed mediamodern and contemporary art
Date
1966
Medium
Acrylic on cloth over wood and acrylic on cord over steel tube
Dimensions
182.9 × 213.4 × 198.1 cm (72 × 84 × 78 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Through prior gifts of Arthur Keating and Mr. and Mrs. Edward Morris
During her short career Eva Hesse explored the expressive, often eccentric possibilities of rigorous, reductive abstraction. She considered Hang Up to be her first significant work of art—the first to achieve the level of "absurdity or extreme feeling" she was seeking.
In the late I960s, at a moment when sculpture was supplanting painting as the avant-garde medium of choice, Hang Up emphasizes painting's most marginal feature, its frame. The frame here is sensitively painted but surrounds only blank wall. Instead it sprouts a generous loop of cord that protrudes at once gracefully and aggressively into the gallery space. Like a body, this strand of industrial tubing even succumbs to gravity, touching the floor.
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