Eva Hesse: Longing, Belonging and Displacement (New Encounters: Arts, Cultures, Concepts)

Here is an important new examination of the work of American German Jewish artist Eva Hesse, one of the most significant figures in twentieth century art. Using exciting new feminist approaches, and beginning with a close focus on two key works, Corby reveals the way Hesse has been constructed as a ""woman artist"" and reveals the absent legacy of the Holocaust and refugee life in her art practice. Considering creativity and the feminine, trauma and historiography, and providing a fascinating reassessment of Hesse's relationship with her mother and its impact on her work, the book also confirms the importance of drawing practice within Eva Hesse's wider oeuvre. SERIES ANNOUNCEMENT New Encounters: Arts, Cultures, Concepts Series Editor: Griselda Pollock This timely new series, with eminent art historian and cultural analyst Griselda Pollock as series editor, brings together major international commentators and also introduces a new generation of emerging scholars. Resisting both the rejection of theory and the current displacement of art history in favour of visual culture, New Encounters instead rejuvenate both approaches. Marked out by its critical engagement with and close informed readings of images, texts and cultural events, this series employs new feminist, postcolonial and queer perspectives. New Encounters also showcases exciting new volumes which revisit key figures in twentieth century art through highly original feminist approaches. From the Publisher: In the ten years between 1960 and 1970, German-born American artist Eva Hesse produced one of the most compelling art practices of the twentieth century. Her death in 1970 has been a profound loss for contemporary art but the creative legacies of her practice continue to impact upon today's artists. In this book, Vanessa Corby presents a fascinating new analysis that starts from and circles back to two drawings made by Eva Hesse in 1960-61. Written from the position of a painter, the book develops a novel art historical method to consider the manner in which artistic protocols and processes negotiate and transform culturally mediated historical experience. Hesse's encounters with the work of Rico Lebrun, the growing cultural significance of The Diary of Anne Frank, and the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann are each situated in relation to the artist's processes of picturing in order to supplement and shift current understanding of Hesse's art practice. Corby aims to show that the artist's work emerged in parallel with the recognition of the event now named 'the Holocaust' in American culture. Thus this groundbreaking text does not claim that Hesse's work is about the Holocaust. Instead, it positions her artistic practice and sense of identity as an artist as the product of a desire to belong, a longing precipitated by her initial displacement caused by forced emigration from Germany in 1939, and a longing re-invoked by the specific cultural and political contexts of 1950s and 1960s America. Here is an important new examination of the work of American German Jewish artist Eva Hesse, one of the most significant figures in twentieth century art. Using exciting new feminist approaches and taking as her starting point two key works, Corby reveals the way in which Hesse has been constructed as a 'woman artist' and explores the overlooked legacy of the Holocaust and refugee life in her art practice. Considering creativity and the feminine, trauma and historiography, and providing a reassessment of Hesse's relationship with her mother and its impact on her work, the book also confirms the importance of drawing practice within Hesse's wider oeuvre. Content: List of illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Series preface -- Introduction -- 1: Skipping text, reading pictures -- 2: Addendum : hemispheres and loose ends -- 3: Cultural memory, trauma and absented history -- 4: Wives, daughters and other(ed) differences -- 5: Longing, belonging and displacement: Evan Hesse's Art-working 1960-1961 -- In place of a conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.