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Eva Hesse's Influence Today? Conversations withThree Contemporary ArtistsJeanne SiegelPublished online: 03 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: Jeanne Siegel (2004) Eva Hesse's Influence Today? Conversations with Three Contemporary Artists,Art Journal, 63:2, 72-88

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2004.10791127

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Eva Hesse with Expanded Expansion,Whitney Museum of American Art, Anti­Illusion, 1969, NewYork. ©The Estate of EvaHesse, Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zurich.

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Duchamp:When one goes tosee people, one is influenced, even if one doesn't think about it!

Cabanne: Sometimes influence comes out later.

Duchamp:Yes, forty years later!-from Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp

Eva Hesse's InfluenceToday?

Conversations with ThreeContemporary Artists

Jeanne Siegel

Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues withMarcel Duchamp,trans. Ron Padgett (1971; New York: Da CapoPress, 1987).

I. The exhibition was on view at Musee d'Orsay.Paris (September 16, 2002-January 12, 2003),and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(March 4-June 8, 2003).2. Renate Petzinger, "Thoughts on Hesse's EarlyWork, 1959-1965," in Eva Hesse, ed. ElisabethSussman (New Haven and London: YaleUniver­sity Press, 2002),40-55. The retrospective exhibi­tion Eva Hesse, organized by Petzinger andSussman, was on view at the San FranciscoMuseum of Modern Art (February 2-May 19,2002), Museum Wiesbaden (June II-October13, 2002), and the Tate Modern, London(February 2-March 9, 2003).

Influence is retrieving its value as clear signs of a return to citing sources are

surfacing. Museums feature major exhibitions of artists' works and their influ­

ences on later artists. One recent example was Manet/Veiasquez:The French Taste forSpanish Painting, which tracked the influence of the Spanish painter's work over

some 250 years. I Critics reviewing all types of exhibitions don't hesitate to iden­

tify possible influences and sources.My intention in examining influence has always been twofold: to trace the

development of an artist's style and content as it moves toward maturation and,

second, to locate what the artist has gained from a mentoror mentors and where she has diverged to create an indi­

vidual or original artwork.Often, the intentions and words of the artist differ

from critical analysis, but both have a significant place

in getting a grasp on the work. In EvaHesse's case, herown profuse writings (journals, diaries, interviews, notes)

continue to dominate critical thinking and often suppressher actual aims. A revelation to viewers was the coverage

of Hesse's original reliefs and machine drawings (influ­

enced by Francis Picabia) in an essay by Renate Petzinger,the Wiesbaden-based cocurator of the retrospective exhibi­

tion Eva Hesse, shown in 2002-03 in San Francisco, Wiesbaden, and London. 2

Symposiums conducted in Weisbaden were designed to research furtherthe influence of German artists on Hesse's work. Recently, the American Lee

Bontecou and the Swede Oyvind Fahlstrom have been acknowledged as influ­ences on Hesse's work.

The following conversations with three contemporary artists reveal their

degree of acknowledgment, acceptance, or rejection of influence. While these

artists come from different generations, they were all academically trained aspainters and later became sculptors. In each conversation I have tried to capture

in the artist's own voice the influence of her time period and where she camefrom and lived.

Time does not diminish the importance of influence on an artist's workthroughout her or his career. Artists don't necessarily discard what they've gainedfrom other, earlier sources. Influences become part of their artistic lineage, leadto new directions that merge with other ideas, and may eventually become sub­

merged. A major reason for choosing these artists was their ability to highlighttheir individualities while noting their debts to Hesse. One feature that becomesevident in the conversations was the artists' awareness of the change in the rela­tionship between the pictorial and the sculptural.

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Conversation with Jackie Winsor

The interview with Jackie Winsor was conductedin her studio in New York City on January IS,2003.

3. Yvonne Rainer's dance The Mind Is Q Musclewas first performed in 1966.

Jeanne Siegel: You arrived in New York in 1967, an extremely active period of

social and political upheaval.

JackieWinsor: The mood of the time was very particular-the Vietnam War and

the unrest at home. I spent my graduate years trying to get the courage to chop

off the big toe of my husband so he didn't have to go to war: There was also the

emotional chaos around the nationwide racial conflicts. The

art world at the time was a tiny place. You could see every

exhibition you wanted in about an hour and a half. It was an

unimaginably different time in SoHo. People were living illegally

in loft buildings and being kicked out by the Fire Department or the landlord in the

middle of the night. After 5:00 P.M. the streets were empty. It was just rats and you.

There were no expectations around money.

Siegel: Around 1970, women were beginning to make inroads into the privi­

leged realms of men. It seems to me that you and Eva Hesse would have been

affected by the early feminist discourse. Was this important for you?

Winsor: Yes. I became aware of feminist activityaround 1969 and regularlyattended

large, informal meetings with other women artists from the neighborhood. I met

Hesse about that time. She was about five years older and was showing with my

male peers. I didn't show in New York until the 1970 Whitney Annual.

The difficulty in 1967 was knowing who the women artists were. It wasn't until

I attended the women artists' meetings that that issue resolved. The weekly meet­

ingswere in large lofts with up to one hundred women artists.

Siegel: In terms of the Women's Movement, how did you think of yourself?

Winsor: As the movement took shape and form, artist/activistJudy Chicago

formed a definition of feminist art principles. The early work in my first solo show

predated this formation. I thought of myself then and now as androgynous in

relationship to my work. Iwas married at the time to Keith Sonnier. His work fell

into her definition as much as mine did. I don't feel that I am being attentive to my

gender when I'm working.

Ideas are in the air. I think that everybody influences everyb- dy. When Ifirst

came to New York, I felt a rapport with Yvonne Rainer. Her work, like mine, was

very physical and equally mindful. Her The Mind Isa Muscle was inventive, with a

big presence and a no-nonsense discipline in it.3 I found it intriguing.

Siegel: Preceding the Women's Movement there was the Civil Rights Movement.

Many artists were engaged in activities against the Vietnam War and in protests

about issues that affected them specifically as artists. Hesse didn't use her art as

a forum for political protest; did you?

Winsor: Iwas interested in politics, but not in my work. The work's content is not

literary or narrative. It's about being physically here, present, and in the moment,

while quietly, silently remembering the universe.

Siegel: When Hesse first returned to New York after a year in Germany, she was

influenced by the work of the young Minimalists Mel Bochner, Sol LeWitt, and

Robert Smithson, and then she found a way to respond to them, to make it more

her own. When you see her work, you can recognize where her ideas came

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4. John Yau, "Neither about Art nor about Life,but about the Gap between Seeing and Knowing:The Sculpture of Jackie Winsor," injackieWinsor,ed. Dean Sobel (Milwaukee: Miiwaukee ArtMuseum, 1991), 47.

from, particularly her obsessive use of repetition and the objects hanging or

placed on the floor.

Winsor: When she visited Keith and me, I recall listening to her stories about her

childhood in Europe and I thought about her work, makingsense or connections

between the two. I felt there was a quality in the color and texture of the surfaceof her work that carried an emotional pitch that was very poetic and haunting.

I felt this particularly in the piece that is a group of wobbly, polyester cylinder/bagshapes. They remind me of souls that have left their bodies. For me they are a

beautiful poetic absence, a place to rest and reflect.

Siegel: Please talk about your cubes that started a few years after Hesse's con­

tainers and stood on the floor. Do they relate to hers?

Winsor: I don't think they are in any way related because they didn't derive fromthe same thing. Mywork is about being present and still-a very conscious, disci­plined stillness. I wanted the cube pieces to hold the place they occupied and have

a large presence. I wanted them (how they command a space) to be like a sleeping

person. I thought of them as you would experience a person of ninety. Whenyou're with them in the present, you're aware of their life history, of their experi­ence, their sadness and joy, but you're also aware of being in the moment. The

pieces are not overwhelmed by the history. They are more concerned with back­

ground issues rather than the theater of life in the foreground.

Siegel: One early piece, Bound Grid (1971-72), stands on the floor and leans onthe wall, with wood strips rising vertically. I thought it was an important piece

for the time. Particularly its use of unconventional, nonindustrial materials. Theurge to use different materials than had been used by men, that were softer,more flexible, was in the air. Some of your choices were similar to Hesse's-e-the

use of cord, rope, and the process of wrapping, twisting, and knotting.

Winsor: Iwas trained as a painter. What interested me in the use of rope andtrees was, on one hand, how they naturally reflected an interest in drawing (line

and color) and, on the other hand, how they had their own inherent fullnessof

energy. The piece, a wavy grid, was a linedrawing or sculpture. There were thicklines that became bumps or bigger bumps. But mostly I was creating a balance andpartnership of wood and rope.

Siegel: You devoted more time to making individual cubes than Hesse.Yourswere complete forms. Hesse's containers were left open on top, and the shellwas fabricated of galvanized steel. My understanding is that there is a differencebetween your concerns when you put a top on the boxes that closed theminto cubes. You introduced small rectangular openings in the sides so that onecould peek inside, but some of the interior remained hidden. It strikes a myster­ious note vis-a-vis the meaning. It introduces questions to the viewer.What isvisible and what is covered over? There is a tension between the known and theunknown. Writer John Yauproposed you were examining this question in theseworks: "What is the difference between seeing and knowing?"?

Winsor: At that time I was interested in creating solids. I thought of the interior spaceas solid air, made real by the solidness of the cube that defined it. I was interested in

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JackieWinsor. Bound Grid,I971-72.Wood and twine.88 x 84 x 8 in. (223.5 x 213.4x 20.3 em). CollectionMusee national d'art mod­erne, Centre GeorgesPompidou, Paris. Courtesyof Paula Cooper Gallery,New York.

5. Irving Sandler,Artof the Postmodern Era (NewYork: Harper Collins, 1996).29.

an equality between the two. Iwas interested in what would happen if you kept the

main sculptural element, the cube, constant. I burned a piece, exploded one, burned

a cube into a sphere. I constructed a layered plaster cube, broke it open, and recon­

figured it inside-out, revealing steps and diagonals.

Siegel: The art historian Irving Sandler, writing about your work, listed yourchoice and source of materials: "tree trunks, bricks, cement, rope, sheetrock,

nails and lathing. In '68 to '71, she made circles of heavy rope, the materialsrefer to nature." 5

Winsor: They are altered nature.

Siegel: Did it relate to the nature of the Maritime Provinces in Canada, where

you were raised?

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6. Ibid.,30.

Winsor: Yes, in that it is part of the homogenous background of lifeexperiences.

But not in how I actually chose them. Iwas looking for materials that related to

what I liked about painting and drawing and that resonated with my sense of physi­

cality. I used saplings because the young wood had a sense of muscularity and con­

vexness. Iwas looking at the trees for the qualities they had in terms of drawing and

physicality. Physicality has also expressed itself in another way in my life: I've been

a gymnast for years.

Siegel: Sandler mentions Bound Grid, pointing out that "Winsor, like Hesse, was

obsessed with seemingly absurdist labor-intensive repetitive work."6 Also he

links the cubes, which became primary structures in your work, to Hesse's earlier

Accession (1967), where she threaded vinyl tubes through perforations into the

interior. Her work implied sexual references.

Winsor: Sandler came out of literature. As I continued to use the cube, I thought

of it more like a sheet of paper or a square canvas, a format that Iwanted to keep

constant to underplay the form sculpturally and bring attention to what happened

within it. Air is what was inside, a cube of solid air. "Obsession" was a word that

came to be used like "one size fits all" for women artists and their work. It brings

with it, from its use in psychiatry as "obsessive/compulsive," a devaluing and under­

mining put-down by inference to a connection between women and madness. I saw

no difference in shaping the knots of rope in Bound Grid from using a brush to create

a form on canvas. Both activities are equally thoughtful, intuitive, and skilled. But I

like the word "absurdist." It's not a word used by the artist, but it indicates that the

viewer might have to try a little more. It's the place where humor can arise.

Siegel: Jeanne Silverthorne has a different point of view about influence. She

believes in it. She said, "r have an influence from everybody."

Winsor: That's a literary interest. It's true that we are shaped by our environment,

but nothing has impacted me as much as the experience of being an immigrant and

moving to the United States at age eleven. Nothing has created a comparable shift

in my being. Working alone, being alone such long hours, has its own influence on

you. When you drag a bunch of saplings home on a truck from New Jersey and then

drag them up five flights of stairs to your studio, you really don't have a bigfeeling

about influence. Instead you wonder who could help you drag them up, or drive the

car, or chop them down. The physicalitygrounds the ideas. I've learned from it, and

it has had an effect on my sense of size and scale.

Siegel: Does coming out of painting and drawing suggest a formalist approach?

Winsor: No, I liked moving the paint around and I painted figuratively as an under­

graduate student. I made the models twenty pounds heavier with added muscle so

they looked Olympian and healthy. Iwas interested in the quality of fatness in the

paint. Myfocus was working to find something that resonated with me. Myfavorite

piece of sculpture was the Winged Victory (c. 190 B.C.E.?). I identified with it. It was

just like my paintings: convex, present, just likethose Olympian gymnasts. Another

favorite was the Venus of Willendorf (c. 22,000 B.C.E.). Perhaps both works pre­

expressed an interest in powerful women. You don't know exactly what it is at the

time. After a while, you may identify it more.

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JackieWinsor. Inset WallPiece (mixed color cut 2"diagonal grid). 2001-02.Stainless steel, black con­crete.16~ x 16~ x 7 in.(41.9x41.9x 17.8cm),inset in wall 4 in. (10.2 cm)deep. Courtesy of PaulaCooper Gallery, NewYork.Photograph:Adam Reich.

7. Elisabeth Sussman, "Letting It Go as It Will: TheArt of Eva Hesse," in Eva Hesse, 17.

Siegel: Elisabeth Sussman, a curator of the recent Hesse exhibition, opened her

catalogue introduction with Hesse's basic premise (1969) to get to non-art, non­nothing, everything-at another kind of meaning just not recognized but neverknown. Non-art distances itself from art'?

Winsor: Some people work on the edge of their own unknown. Historically, artists

of the twentieth century have spent a

lot of time trying to make non-art art.

This impulse is now a hundred years

old. Nihilism is about death. Nihilism

and non-art held hands in the early

part of the century, around the time of

World War I,when there were many

deaths and the culture was in trauma.

Siegel: Hesse was born into concen­

tration-camp Germany. Later,afterbecoming severely ill, she was anx­

ious to arrive at something totallyoriginal before she died. But she wasagainst beauty in art.

Winsor: I can understand that.

Superficially, beauty carries baggage

related to convention, but the histori­

cal function of beauty is to make palat­

able the experience of loss related to

death. Even now we send our loved

ones' dead bodies to the funeral parlor

to make them look beautiful. Beauty is

healing, for it has the power to coun­

terbalance the horrific-to make it

palatable. Death intrudes and you are

caught in a profound moment of loss

with a great need to share it. I think

that beauty is the balm for that moment, for loss. Beauty can go into that area of

lifeexperience that is horrific and give voice to it, touching the profoundness that is

harbored within and ends up being poetry to other people.

Siegel: In your consistent denial of influence you have argued for a differentrationale. You point out profound and individual ways of arriving at ideas thatmay have their sources in Hesse, but are dissimilar in their intentions and ulti­mate meanings. This allows room for influence and originality. I find it provoca­tive. Nevertheless, I want to point out where I think you definitely share ideas.Youboth fleshed out the minimalist principle of repetition, but never with the exac­titude of Minimalism. You shared a deep interest in the body, if in different ways.You both thought of yourselves as loners, women searching for self-identity. Youshared the desire to express self-identity through art not controlled by gender.

Your own recent works such as InsetWall Piece (2001-02), in which you cut outspaces in the wall, appear to be less about muscularity and heaviness, perhapsstill about hidden things.

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The interview with Jeanne Silverthorne was con­ducted in her studio on January 28,2003.

Winsor: The first one was a small portion of the cube pieces, the window. With

its open invitation to closeness, it invites you to your center within its center. I have

been interested for a long time in reuniting opposites into a seamless experience

of being whole. The opposites in these pieces are the functions related to the

head and the heart, to thought and feeling. The work is both abstract and intimate.

The square and the cube are abstract, they're mathematical forms, measurements,

perimeters, boundaries, mental constructs, and as such, are emotionally unknow­

able. Into that emotional distance I bring richness, closeness, and the presence

of feeling and caring. Radiance and stillness are qualities shared by both the very

distant and the very close. It is another focus of this series. Radiance, likethe sun,

is expressed as color saturation and intensity, along with the quality of emotional

substance in the material; it reaches out to meet you. The stillness of the mountain

is expressed in the centeredness of the form. The direction inward, into the wall,

into yourself, into the more eternal qualities reflected through the material becomes

an echo of yourself.

Siegel: You came to NewYork in 1985, so you wouldn't have known Eva Hesse.

But you know a lot about her?

Jeanne Silverthorne: Ifell in love with her work like everybody else. I read the arti­

cles that were published around the time of her death, particularly Lucy Lippard's

Eccentric Abstraction essay."

Siegel: Which every critic continues to use as a source. Then

Conversation with Jeanne Silverthorne in 1970 , Life published an article "Fling, Dribble, and Dip"that reproduced Hesse, along with Lynda Benglis and Richard

Serra, and showed her late Rope piece that clearly identified

her with Pollock.? Did you value her work as an innovator of great importance?

Silverthorne: Absolutely. She deflated Minimalism in a really witty, inventive way.

Iwas just looking this morning at the reproductions of her work and was struck

again by those early reliefs with which I actually had a rather long courtship. I

was much more immediately taken with the "signature" sculptures. I don't know

whether it was time passing or the times changing, but those reliefs and drawings

grew on me. I got interested in Philip Guston and I think there's a lot of Guston-like

qualities in those works-cartoon abstraction, with various sorts of pipelike exten­

sions that can read as plumbing or human body parts. That was something Iwas

already interested in. Now I'm at the point where I prefer the early work. I think

of the reliefs as falling into a category that might be labeled the "comic/organic."

Siegel: I find them original, but strange. I found the formal play innovative

where cords projected beyond the Masonite frame.

8. Essay written in conjunction with the exhibitionEccentric Abstraction at the Fischbach Gallery, NewYork, in fall 1966; Lucy R. Lippard, "EccentricAbstraction," Art International I0, no. 9 (Novem­ber 20, 1966): 28, 34-40; repro in Changing (NewYork: Dutton, 1971), 100.9. "Fling,Dribble, and Dip," Life 68, no. 7(February 27, 1970): 66.

Silverthorne: While the sculpture seems very American, the reliefs have a more

European sensibility-are more tied to that tradition of abstraction and Surrealism

than the sculpture is. I think the reliefs come right out of somebody likeJean Arp,

but with the addition of that eccentricity that she's so famous for, that makes her

results seem unfamiliar. I like that, on the one hand, they seem familiar because

they seem European and traditional, and, on the other hand, they seem completely

strange. And that is really compelling to me-the familiar and strange side by side.

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Jeanne Silverthorne.Untitled (Chandelier), 1994.Rubber and resin. 60 x40 in. diam. (152.4 x 101.6em), installation dimen­sions variable. Courtesy ofMcKee Gallery, NewYork.

Siegel: You're a feminist; aren't women better off today?

Silverthorne: No question! It was all men until the I970s. Women's work usually

didn't get shown, if shown didn't often get reviewed, and if reviewed didn't get

illustrated in the magazines. Women artists' work didn't command the same prices.

Still doesn't. Things may be immensely improved, but remain far from equitable.

Today the situation is complicated by the fact that there's just so much out

there. The sheer quantity speeds up the rate of amnesia. Even though we spent so

much time deconstructing notions of authorial originality, we proceed as if we were

all firstborns and all born yesterday.

siegel:You're an exception because you seem to welcome influences.

Silverthorne: I think of what has been done and is being done as a conversation

one enters, rather than a competition. Among the many functions one's work takes

on is that of engaging in a series of responses, questions, digressions. It is not so

much an argument as a conversation.

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Siegel: One area that you share with Hesse is your use of materials. They sepa­

rate from the hard industrial materials that the Minimalists favored. They are soft,

pliable, and tend to be characterized as more feminine.

Silverthorne: Latex, which Hesse used a lot, is one kind of rubber. I use synthetic

rubber almost exclusively, and it's certainly soft and pliable. Another difference is

that her pieces are constructed, and mine are literally modeled and then cast.

Although this may not seem like a big distinction, I think it is, because most of my

work has to do with the touch of the hand, sometimes literally.

Siegel: Hesse's had to do with the hand too.

Silverthorne: Yes, but the hand wrapping or other repetitive kinds of obsessive

activities were considered, at the time, uncontaminated by art connotations.

Whereas I am more engaged in the eye-hand coordination aspect of modeling

and copying. Another difference is that her sculptures are spatial, but not architec­

tural. I am more concerned with architecture. And my family background had an

influence as well. Myfather was a machinist who could do electrical and plumbing

jobs. In my use of wires and pipes Iwasn't thinking about Hesse first.

Siegel: Do you see Hesse's work as metaphoric or illustrative? For example, do

you see any evidence of surgical instruments in her drawings?

Silverthorne: Isee them as transformative. She goes beyond these meanings.

Siegel: Do you see any similar meanings in your work? You were both con­

cerned with the body. How is that registered in your content?

Silverthorne: I like to make objective correlatives for the nonsubstantial-you

know, what's the shape or weight of an idea, what does a feeling look like? And

feelings are often expressed through the body-somaticized. Ultimately, however,

I may care more about form than content, inextricable as they are, and Iwant

there to be a slidingregister from representation to abstraction in any given instal­

lation, sometimes in an individual piece.

Siegel: Do you believe in the role of beauty?

Silverthorne: I've spent my whole life trying to make things beautiful and beautiful

things. Possibly I'm just not very good at it. Myobjects don't necessarily look beau­

tiful. I'm also very drawn to strangeness, and beauty is familiar. We recognize it

when we see it, even though it may be in the eyes of the beholder, whereas strange­

ness is by definition unfamiliar. So there's something about that dialectic, about

being seduced and attracted to the strangeness, on the one hand, and repulsed and

pushed away by it, on the other hand. I stillwant the sculptures to be beautiful more

than anything else. The strangeness just happens.

Siegel: This is a characteristic you do not share with Hesse. She negated beauty.

She associated it with the decorative.

Silverthorne: Maybe beauty came too easily to her. Anyway, her sculptures are

very beautiful. She couldn't finally escape it. Strangeness is the element that I can't

seem to escape, it happens despite my best efforts to avoid it.

Siegel: But your practice of hanging objects from the ceiling or letting cords

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10. Mel Bochner. "Discussion between MelBochner and Joan Simon," October File, EVQ Hesse,ed. Mignon Nixon (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002),44.I I. Ibid.

hang down to the floor in a loose and scattered way reminds me of Hesse. I also

see an influence of Bruce Nauman.

Silverthorne: Absolutely. And with Nauman there was a linguistic aspect. Back in

the early '80s Iwas interested in the relationship between language and the body.

Iwas interested in what it felt like to be on the receiving end of language, what the

physical impact of words was, so Iwas modeling prosthetic devices and putting

them on bases with words as a way of talking about how language is a kind of sup­

port but feels like a replacement. It isn't, in fact, but it feels like it's taking the place

of something that's lost. And again there's the dual sense of being, on the one hand

a help and, on the other, an emblem of loss.

Siegel: Hesse had a very personal interest in language. She wanted to self-educate.

Mel Bochner bought her a thesaurus and she spent time expanding her vocabu­

lary, evident particularly in her titles. Was your interest in language what made

you realize your belief in art history and its influence? When did you start writ­

ing reviews for Artforum?

Silverthorne: I reviewed for Artforum from about 1982 to 1986 and wrote a couple

of articles on film in the early 1990s. 1wouldn't say I "believe" in art history-far

from it. But to ignore precedent, recorded or not, validated or not, is impoverishing.

Siegel: Hesse admired some contemporaries, such as Carl Andre, but was influ­

enced by others. A surprising one that has surfaced is Oyvind Fahlstrom, whom

she met before 1963 in New York.10

Silverthorne: Ican see that. Fahlstrorn's project was so allegorical, so dense in its

references that it's hard to feel one knows it well without serious study. Certainly in

terms of the formal issues at play in the work, I can see how Hesse was influenced

by him. He makes these odd physical extensions, linking everything in stretched-out

chains. And, of course, Hesse is all about extensions, almost umbilical extensions.

Siegel: When she made Connection (1969), which consisted of approximately

twenty individual pieces hung from the ceiling, she used fiberglass soaked in

polyester resin wrapped over with cloth-covered wire. Despite Hesse's claim,

they were bonelike and awkward, but beautiful. The surface material reflected

the light and they became luminous. Bochner said her ability to trap light on

a surface was a major contribution. II

You both were trained as painters. One issue argued in Hesse's time was

that her work was mostly about painting, not about sculpture. Was that an issue

for you?

Silverthorne: The separateness of the categories painting and sculpture certainly

seems less relevant than ever. I think one of the reasons she's so interesting is pre­

cisely because she helped break down those distinctions.

Siegel: Hesse developed a flow between the horizontal and the vertical.

Silverthorne: Absolutely. This is what's so interesting-the state of in-between.

Siegel: Hesse, particularly in her sculptures and later works, was so aware of

surfaces. You share an interest in surfaces and skin. Your recent frame reliefs were

obviously about flesh. And strange indeed! Do they relate somehow to Hesse's

thinking or process?

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Jeanne Silverthorne. Noel+ H20 (Big Grief), 2003.Rubber. 45 x 33 x 13 in.(114.3 x 83.8 x 33 ern),Edition of 3. Courtesy ofMcKee Gallery, NewYork.Photograph: Michael Korol,NewYork.

Silverthorne: Rubber references flesh-has the same tactile quality. So we share

that. But her skin is about surface and mine is about depth.

Siegel: You've spoken of being more representational. In some new work you

introduced tiny rubber figures with postures that represent their feelings.

Silverthorne: I meant that although everything Ido is representational, in that it

is a copy of something--a fragment of plaster debris, a microscopic view of a retinal

cell, for instance-it comes out looking likeabstract art. While the frame works are

blowups of distress viewed from inside the body, the figures are also representative

of anxious states. but seen from the outside, dwarfed by their emotions.

Siegel: One relief, a pile of intertwining, stringy forms, is Pollock-like. It also

resembles James Rosenquist's spaghetti in F-III (1965).

Silverthorne: That's actually a picture of tear-activated protein, very loosely inter­

preted. Rosenquist was another one of those people I was wild about. I saw F-I I Iin Philadelphiaas a student, and the fact that you could walk through parts of that

was amazing. And again, it was between painting and sculpture.

Siegel: Many internal parts of the body have been linked to recent scientificfindings. Are yours based on them?

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Conversation with PollyApfelbaum

The interview with PollyApfelbaum took placein her studio in New York on January 16. 2003.Some elements are excerpted from a talk by theartist at the School of VisualArts in November2002.

Silverthorne: Yes, in a certain way. Big Griefis a view of saltwater molecules (NaCi

+ H20), with pipes coming out of the frame that are labeled with the proteins and

hormones we make when we cry. Tear-activated Protein looks likespaghetti; it is a

picture of protein shapes, freely composed, proteins being a by-product of crying.

Siegel: Do you use technology?

Silverthorne: Yes, I use photoelectron microscopic images and other illustrations

from science textbooks to find out what the shape of protein is, but the composi­

tion or arrangement of those shapes is often my own.

Siegel: Do you recontextualize science as art?

Silverthorne: No, I simply use the recent findings of science to create newer pic­

tures of emotion. We somaticize our feelings, translate our feelings into symptoms

and other physical reactions.

Siegel: Despite your leap into science, do you still see the new works as strange

and beautiful?

Silverthorne: In the last few I've changed my palette to black and white. It may be

the case that this makes the sculptures more conventionally beautiful.

Siegel: How did you view yourself as an artist when you first started?

Polly Apfelbaum: I considered myself a hybrid and also a poacher, so anything

was up for grabs. I started poaching because I really wanted to take from as many

worlds as possible. Maybe because I didn't study sculpture, the first thing Igot

interested in was three-dimensional form. Igot interested in simple form, simple

geometries-like a cut flower-and the pieces were fabricated in wood.

I came to New York in the age of appropriation. This opened up some new

territory for artists. I made a piece called Daisy Chain (1989) that was taken from

Andy Warhol. He used dingbats, the graphic-design signs. Iwas interested in differ­

ent kinds of playful little forms (clovers, flowers) that he

used, putting them together and havingthem as a chart of

my different interests at that time.

On the other hand, a lot of sculpture at that time was

big and monumental. Iwanted to get away from that. What Iwas discovering about

form was that it could be fluid and it could change. It could reference all kinds of

art-historical movements, but it could also have humility. These are things that I'm

still thinking about, and they really have to do with the kind of formal and concep­

tual concerns that I'm interested in now. An important piece from that time is

Wallflowers (1990). It's a wallflower, it's a target, it uses the cliches of our culture

and the wall as support for a piece of sculpture. There are about 650 little paper

flowers obsessively tacked to the wall, referencing a rose window, all kinds of asso­

ciations, but also creating an abstract form.Around the same time, I began to rediscover making things with my hand­

making something fast and quick. Iwas interested in craft, mixinghigh and low. I

didn't want art on a pedestal. And Iwas trying to bring in color, trying to find out

what color was and what materials Iwanted to work with. Igave myself the option

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PollyApfelbaum. TheException and the Rule,1989.Woad. Forty-eightunits, each 68 x 77 x 4 in.(172.7 x 195.6 x 10.2 em).Courtesy of the artist andO'Amelio Terras, NewYork.

of two very different materials. One that was everyday-cardboard, sheeting-the

other was a synthetic fabric that I came across. I liked it because it was cheesy. It

was slinky. Poor material to rich material, the everyday to the extravagant. So, the

early work had many more cultural associations, and I wanted to figure out how

that translated out in the world.

I suppose the material, in a way, led me from sculpture to painting. It allowed

me to deal with the kind of color, the form that I was interested in. abstracting that

language-an abstraction that was likea meltdown of color and form. At this point

too, I was opening up a bottle of dye and just spilling it on the fabric. No control. I

was looking for fluidity of form and collapse of form. I was interested in pulling from

different worlds. Sculpture sits on the floor, but Iwondered what it would mean to

have a painting on the floor. It was a support that I thought had been ignored. And

it can be an interesting place-a place that belongs to domesticity, the place where

your dirty clothes go. And it turned out to be a good place for me to go. Color and

material could be sexy. Puddled and pink-shocking.

Of course, I also looked at the floor historically-at Lynda Benglis, for exam­

ple, and her ideas of flow. I wanted to locate my work in the everyday, with cheap,

lightweight materials. What happens when you just throw material on the floor­

skirting ideas of reverence? Nothing is ever glued down. I think of myself more as

a collagist, as a kind of cutter. The consequence is that it becomes temporal. The

work is fixed in place for the length of the show, and then it's packed up in boxes.

As the show would go to different places, I would take the materials from the studio

and reorganize and recontextualize them, within this simple visual language.

I have a piece called Compulsory Figures (1996). It is an installation, it's not

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PollyApfelbaum. Gun Club,2002. Synthetic crushedvelvet and dye. 19 x 21 ft.(579.1 x 640 em]. Courtesy ofthe artist and D'AmelioTerras, NewYork.

painting. The viewer activates this space-the viewer is like the ball in a pinball

machine. "Compulsory figures" is an ice-skating term for the strict geometries that

are the structure behind the more expressive part. The material is very flat, but

because of the nap, the viewer activates it by walking through the piece as a visual

field. Of course it's also an homage to certain painters-Ellsworth Kelly and Blinky

Palermo-to a kind of thinking about geometry and systems that has gone by the

wayside.

Siegel: You've mentioned some earlier artists who have influenced you. Andy

Warhol was a favorite. You told me you felt influenced by the contemporary

Elizabeth Murray. In what way?

Apfelbaum: Mainly the use of color and the exuberance of her forms. She is also a

painter who moves out into space. I also think about Chuck Close, Paul Feeley,

Agnes Martin, and so many others.

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12. The mid-career survey exhibition PollyApfelbaum. organized by the Institute ofContemporary Art. Philadelphia (May 3-July 27.2003), traveled to the Contemporary Art Center,Cincinnati (December 5. 2003-February 29.2004). and the Kemper Museum of ContemporaryArt. Kansas City (June 4-September 5. 2004).

Siegel: This may sound strange, but I feel, in other ways, you have been influ­

enced by Eva Hesse. Do you feel any connection?

Apfelbaum: Yes, of course, I think there is a strong affinity. Hesse is a good exam­

ple of someone who moves from floor to wall to space very freely and, in so doing,

she gives artists a kind of permission to cross boundaries, use new materials, occupy

different spaces. But she is also very structured, in spite of the fluidity of her forms.

Or you might say, she needs to be structured in order to embrace the fluidity of her

materials and forms, without losing all control. This is something Ifeel very close to.

Siegel: One obvious similarity is your desire for a different set of materials­

more associated with women-soft, domestic materials. Your choices of them

were for different purposes, but you were both antimonumental in your

approaches.

Apfelbaum: I am a do-it-yourselfer. A certain self-reliance has been very important

to me and the work.

Siegel: Hesse was educated by Albers atYaleand decidedly interested in color.

She was a painter, a collagist, and a sculptor-mediums that you have gravitated

to as well.

Apfelbaum: At Purchase, where I studied before going to Tyler, some of the faculty

members had studied with Albers at Yale. The material and color influence comes

from a number of different places in both design and art. Earlyon, I looked at Klee

and Kandinsky as I started out with printmaking and painting.

Drawing (in the broad sense of the term) is in the work. The new piece, TodayJ Love Everybody (2003), installed at Triple Candie in New York in summer 2003, is

all about drawing and line. I do make wall work too. I don't show the wall work as

much as the floor work, but it's just as important to me. The installation in my sur­

vey exhibition at the ICA in Philadelphiawas the wallpaper designed for the space.'?

It came out of drawing on bed sheets. In the past Iwanted to keep the two bodies

of work separate, but now I am trying to integrate the two. Wall-floor.

Siegel: You are more of an appropriator than Hesse. She responded first to

Abstract Expressionism, then Surrealism, then a specific response to Minimalism,

and finally to Pollock. Are you influenced by Pollock in any way, say his moving

around the painting on the floor?

Apfelbaum: I sometimes think he has entered my body-especially when I am

installing. Maybe I am channeling him. The floor has a different physicality, which is

something that I am very conscious of. Depending on the piece, I leave it on the

floor; it's all about the viewer moving around the space and that relationship.

Siegel: Although Hesse could be ambiguous, you specifically leave more room

for the viewer. Participation has become a more important phenomenon today

in art. You spoke about gravity being "the secret of your work." That was clearlyregistered in Hesse's hanging pieces. How do you express it?

Apfelbaum: Not really a secret. Without gravity my work would not exist, but I am

sayingthat because most people think the work is glued down. It is not!

Siegel: Unlike Hesse you welcome beauty.

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Apfelbaum: I think her work is very beautiful. It worked in its own context. Iam

working in my own time.

Siegel: You both were obsessed by opposites, as a matter of fact, some similarones. Order and chaos, for example.

Apfelbaum: That seems natural. You do one thing then you try its opposite. I love

to see different moods, tones, voices-loud and quiet. I always seem to be rebelling

against myself.

Siegel: Hesse was working in the 1960s, which means she was known a genera­

tion before you were. She had a rough time, in part due to her horrific back­ground. Her personality was very different from yours. Although smart, she was

worried and insecure. But you share a desire for the exploratory. However, theworld you entered in the 1980swas jumping. By the time you were showing, the

role of women in the art world was more respected and their art was collected.It was a joyful and active time in the art scene.

Apfelbaum: And the times we're living in now are hard times to make art. I alwayssay that I'm a desperate optimist, but these are truly uglytimes. I recently came

across a quote from the folksinger Phil Ochs, from 1967, that said, "In ugly timesbeauty is the best revenge." I'm also a huge fan of punk rock music. For example

Gun Club has the kind of spirit that Iwanted to see in my work, a mix of experimen­tation and absurdity. Loud but also structured. I don't want to make a program of

anxiety, because it seems to me that the one thing about art is that it is not con­

strained by a program.

jeanne Siegel is an art historian and critic. as well as chair of fine arts at the School of VisualArts in NewYork City. The former president of AICA/USA, she is the editor of Artwords: Discourse on the 60s and 70s(UMI Research Press. 1985) and Art Talk: TheEarly 80s (Da Capo Press, 1990), and the author of Paintingafter Pollock: Structures of Inffuence (Gordon and Breach Arts International, 1999).

jackie Winsor was born in Newfoundland, moved to Nova Scotia and finallythe United States. She hasexhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and in the Whitney Biennial.Her most recent one-person showwas the inaugural exhibition at the redesigned P.S.I Contemporary Art Center in Long IslandCity(October 1997-May 1998). She has been represented by Paula Cooper Gallery since 1973.

jeanne Silverthorne, born and educated in Philadelphia, is represented by McKee Gallery, New York, PauleAnglim Gallery, San Francisco, and Shoshana-Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles. Her work has been featured insolo and group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum and many other venues.

PollyApfelbaum, born in Pennsylvania, has been a New York-based artist since 1978. After approximatelyeight years of developing work in her studio, she went on to have one hundred group shows and twenty­four one-person shows. She is represented by the D'Amelio Terras gallery, New York.

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