Eva Hesse: Studiowork »

Briony Fer is Professor of Art History at University College London and is author of The Infinite Line: Re-making Art After Modernism and On Abstract Art (both published by Yale).

Throughout her career, Eva Hesse (1936--1970) produced a significant number of small, experimental works alongside her large-scale sculpture. These so-called “test-pieces” were made in a wide range of materials, including latex, wire-mesh, sculp-metal, wax, and cheesecloth. Rather than considering them simply technical explorations, the art historian Briony Fer renames these small objects studiowork and argues that they put in question conventional notions of what sculpture is.

The book contains a comprehensive catalogue of the studiowork, including many new works that have never before been seen in public. Although previously these small objects were considered peripheral to the major sculptures, this fascinating new study argues that they force us to ask fundamental questions, not just about what an artwork is, but about the work that art does in our culture.

Library Journal

Eva Hesse was an innovative sculptor, active in the 1960s, whose work has been much collected by museums. Until her untimely death in 1970, Hesse produced sculptures out of such experimental materials as string, paper, metal screen, resin, latex, and cheesecloth. This book presents all of Hesse's known test pieces, which Fer (art history, Univ. Coll., London) describes as small, experimental things that she made as part of her working process but which do not quite amount to being works in their own right. Thinking about these objects, Fer constructs five chapters, each a substantial essay on questions raised by the exhibition of such works, such as their purpose for Hesse, their meaning for museumgoers today, and their place in Hesse's final body of work. Numerous color photographs show the studio works, other Hesse sculptures, and relevant comparison works by other artists. VERDICT A meaty and theory-filled book for readers who want to think more deeply about meaning in sculpture and Hesse's work in particular.—Kathryn Wekselman, MLn, Cincinnati