Eva Hesse and the Enduring Ephemeral

Photo by Andy Keate


Sometimes the yearning becomes an ache. It is fleeting, but poignant. This particular yearning-turned-ache is for a city, a city of rich history and embodied decorum, one with so many enduring charms, but a city principally, for me, and uniquely, in which art is at once both immaculately institutionalized and as fresh and raw as the meats in Smithfield Market. Born forth on winds from the whispers of the muses of passion and spontaneity, the ache encourages me to ride those winds straight into the arrivals terminal at Heathrow Airport.
But winds change.

This week the muses' whispers came courtesy of an article in the NY Times T Magazine about a show that recently closed at the Camden Arts Center - "Eva Hesse Studiowork". Shows of this intrigue almost never find their way to Washington, and even occasionally skip New York, but never miss London.

Having first fallen in love with Hesse's work at a 2002- 2003 retrospective at the Tate Modern, the article awoke in me that yearning which is, like her work, something ephemeral that endures.