Maria
Jones
1
September 2013
Minimalism: Feminists Fight Marginalization
Through Eva Hesse
To
my father, gender was never an issue or obstacle. In fact, he always told me he
was happy he had two girls and no boys. Unfortunately, my dad’s utopian view is
not how western society functions. Our society favors the male -women are seen
as a minority and things like unequal wages and unequal treatment are still
prevalent. My father did not prepare me for the inevitable uphill battle that
comes with being a woman in a male dominated society. After serving in the
United States Navy, a very patriarchal system, I presumed the art world was not
as patriarchal of a system, and I thought it would be easy for me to transition
into the art world as an emerging artist. I quickly found the history of art
has been plagued by sexist values since the creation of art. My personal
artistic pursuits and processes have developed in a clean and formal fashion
directly influenced by Minimalism. I was drawn to Minimalism based on the idea
of leaving the artist biography out and letting the work speak for itself
echoing the industrial and machine made. I felt Minimalist styles were a
delicate way of creating emotion for the viewer without putting my own out
there in blazing colors. Interestingly, Minimalism was created to counter
Abstract Expressionism, and Eva Hesse, a minimalist denounced by fellow male
counterparts and facing her own mortality, participated in the Feminist
movement of the 1960s. As of the 1960s, female artists united to fight for
there artistic rights alongside their male counter parts, and would no longer
idly sit back and allow their artistic careers to fade into obscurity. The
Feminist movement was born out of necessity, and Minimalism, developing
alongside was a perfect target for the Feminist political agenda of equal
rights in the formal Art setting.
Minimalism
as a movement originated out of a need to disrupt the museum’s powerful grip on
demanding art displayed the personal (Chave, 149). Abstract Expressionism
dominated the art world from the 1950s into the late 1970s and 1980s. It was a
visual language of (opposed) gender metaphors created after World War II, and
curators and critics favored the work of heterosexual white males based on
historical patriarchy in art history and art practice[1].
Minimalism was based on Marxist ideals, but patriarchal constructs and gender
politics made it difficult for fellow female artists to be seen as equals by
curators. Marxism relegated the personal and expressive to secondary standings
and considered such expression provoking marginalization, which was prevalent
in Abstract Expressionism and the then present state of the arts (150). Artists
like Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Sol Lewitt, and Donald Judd fought against
Abstract Expressionism through the creation of art that required no emotional
attachment, told no stories, and was anti-biographical. Even when the women
artists denounced any form of attachment to their work, critics created an
emotional attachment or biography. Exempt from the usual practice of biography,
male Minimalists touted detachment, but the work itself spoke for them. Robert
Morris claimed simplistic geometric studies, but his monolithic geometric
sculptures dwarfed the gallery space with their suggestively phallic and
strongly masculine gestures[2].
Carle Andre’s 1966 Lever (see
fig. 1) was meant to be
impersonal, but he regaled his audiences with stories of his grandfather. Andre
systematically laid 137 firebricks in a neat row projecting from the gallery
wall into the viewer’s personal space.
The
piece was devoid of any trace of the artist’s hand. Andre expected his work to
be devoid of emotion but he greatly influenced his colleague Eva Hesse through
her strong emotional connection to it because it reminded her of the people and
past in Germany that suffered and were lost during the reign of Hitler in Nazi
Germany.
Eva
Hesse was a Jewish refuge born in Nazi Germany in 1936. Her life was filled
with tragedy[3],
and she strongly believed her art and life were connected. “I don’t value the
totality of the image on these abstract or aesthetic points. For me, it is a
total image that has to do with me and my life” (Reckitt, 27). Trained as a
painter, Hesse began developing her minimalistic style in the mid 1960s after
meeting Carl Andre and Sol Lewitt (Butler, 245). Her later work became
sculptural and emphasized geometric shapes like the cube, grids, and
serialization and repetition. Upon returning to Germany in the late 1960s her
works began introducing industrial materials like steel and wire, as well as
non-industrial materials like rubber and latex, based on the rubble left behind
after the war. Hesse adamantly
denied creating gender in her work like many female artists of her time to
prevent complete ostracism by the Art world, but her forms contained organic
elements as opposed to geometric masculine structures creating a feminine
quality enjoyed by critics. After graduating she adopted Minimalist practices
and began to gain prominence in the art world, but always included an organic
element that eventually attracted the interest of Feminist artists. Much of her
work displayed Minimalist styles on the surface, her use of non-industrial
materials hinted at her underlying personal connection with the work (Hopkins,
150). Her cube pieces Acession I and Accession II (see fig. 2) are a strong example of this emotional
contradiction.
Fig. 2 Ascession II, 1967. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California.
Each
cube is fashioned from metal and mesh, but they are denied their Minimal
formality when she employs the use of rubber tubing. Her repetitive and
obsessive compulsive looping of small lengths of grey rubber tubing through the
mesh loops created an ordered exterior but a chaotic lively interior that hints
at the more personal through disorganization and loss of structure and
mechanization. In 1969 she was
diagnosed with a brain tumor, which ultimately led to her death in 1970.
Female minimalist artists like Judy Chicago and writer Lucy
Lippard were pioneers in instituting the personal and gendering their work,
thus participating in the Feminist movement. Their work forced the art world to
see the lack of personal expression in art as a way of silencing the voices of
women artists, because to Feminists of that time it was ignoring the major
gender inequalities in society (150). They saw the work of Eva Hesse as a
gateway into Feminist art through Minimalism because of her ability to express
the personal and have a voice in masculine art form, while adhering to the
formal qualities of the Minimalist visual language. In 1970 Hesse discussed
femininity and feminism in her art in an interview by Cindy Nemser (Reckitt, 27).
Hesse’s tragic life story and her choice to not separate her life from her art
prevented her work from being completely Minimalist. Elements of her work, like
the endless loops of rubber in her Accession
cubes and the giant piece of organically shaped wire protruding into the
viewers’ personal space in her piece Hanging
(see fig. 3), add expressivity
and the personal, and the inclusion of materials like wax and liquid latex
suggest an organic, impermanent, human element making her work an expanded form
of Minimalism.
Other
Feminist artists like Yoko Ono, Anna Mendieta, Marina Abramovic[4],
and Yvonne Rainer further rejected the impersonal by instituting their naked
bodies into their work, and making the issue of female marginalization
completely unavoidable. Yoko Ono performed Cut
Piece (see fig. 4) in New York
in 1965. She sat passively on a stage in her best clothes and invited the
audience to cut pieces of her clothes.
Ono’s piece addressed the stereotypes of female passivity and male
voyeurism.
Feminist
art was loud and passionate, while the work of Hesse was subtler. Hesse’s work
bridged the gap between the depersonalized stance of Minimalism and the highly
personal stance of Feminism, leading the way in the art world as a
Protofeminist.
In the end I find myself drawing from Minimalism
and Feminism. Prior to serving in the United States Navy I was very naïve to
societal male pressures. Serving has opened my eyes to the harsh realities of
being a woman in Western society. Male dominance is present in all forms of our
society, whether I am an artist, a sailor, or any other profession open to both
sexes. My art is a critique of a specific patriarchal institution, the
military, through the use of specific military symbols like the national
defense ribbon. Through the influence of the industrial nature of Minimalism, I
use serialization, repetition, and a minimal color palate. The viewer is
invited to experience the minimal quality created through participation in a
military institution, but offered the organic to experience the individuals
that make it up. On the other hand, my work echoes the legacy of Eva Hesse and
Feminist Art. Further investigation leads the viewer into
the more personal tumultuous battle the female individual experiences through
the participation in a marginalizing patriarchal organization. My work is
affected by my personal experiences, and much like Hesse my art and life go
hand-in-hand. I address the disconnect between the impersonal and personal
through the continuous addition of the military bed corners, rectangular shapes
representative of the intimacy of the bed, and the incessant imperfection and addition
of feminine crafts like weaving, crochet, beading, etc. Many young women today
believe female marginalization is a thing of the past, but it is still widely
prevalent. My art speaks to these complacent viewers, and engages them to
experience the inequalities being silenced by a patriarchal institution. My art
is my voice, and much like the Feminists, I will use my voice to address the
military’s attempts to silence the female voices in their midst. Sitting idly
by is no longer an option.
Works Cited
Chave,
Anna C. “Minimalism and Biography.” Reclaiming
Female Agency: Feminist Art History After
Postmodernism. Ed. Norma Broude, Mary D. Garrard. Los Angeles: University
of California
Press, 2005. 385-399. Print.
Butler,
Cornelia, and Lisa Gabrielle Mark, eds. WACK!
Art and The Feminist Revolution. Los Angeles:
The Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007. Print.
Grant,
Simon. “Interview with Helen Charash About the Life and Work of Her Late Sister
Eva Hesse.”
Tate Etc. Magazine 22 February 2013:
1. Web.
Hopkins,
David. After Modern Art 1945-2000.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 149-151. Print.
Reckitt,
Helena, ed. Art and Feminism. New
York City: Phaidon Press, 2012. 204. Print.
Tanner,
Marcia. “Eva Hesse.” Rev. of It Is Something, It Is Nothing: The “Non-work” of
Eva Hesse,
by Elizabeth Sussman and Renate Petzinger. Stretcher. 2 February 2002. 1. Web.
[1] Many
women working in the visual language of Abstract Expressionism like Louise
Bourgeois, Elaine De Kooning, Helen Frankenthaller, Lee Krasner, Nancy Spero,
and even Eva Hesse went unrecognized during the Abstract Expressionist
movement.
[2]
See Chave,
to understand the interesting shift Robert Morris’s work took, and how he
became an important artist supporting the feminist movement.
[3]
Eva
Hesse and her sister were placed in an internment camp for children before
making it to the United States as refuges. Her mother committed suicide when
Hesse was eleven, and she developed a fatal brain tumor in 1970 (Grant).
[4] In 1974 Marina
Abramovic almost died for her art in the performance piece Rhythm O. See Butler 353.
No comments:
Post a Comment