arts & life

PHOTO BY BARBARA BROWN, COURTESY ZEITGEIST FILMS

f i lm

A Moving Portrait

Eva Hesse, circa 1963

Avishay Artsy | Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.

pioneering artist

Eva Hesse comes

alive in a new film.

details

Eva Hesse will be shown
Aug. 19-21 and Aug. 27 at the
Detroit Film Theatre at the
Detroit Institute of Arts.
$7.50-$9.50. (313) 833-4005; dia.org.

46 August 18 • 2016

E

va Hesse first became
known in the New York art
world of the 1960s by mak-
ing colorful Abstract Expressionist
paintings. But it was her departure
from the art scene and a lengthy
return to her native Germany
that led her to begin making the
abstract sculptures that would earn
her global acclaim.
The first full-length documen-
tary about this original and pro-
lific artist, simply titled Eva Hesse,
screens at the DIA’s Detroit Film
Theatre Aug. 19-21 and Aug. 27. It
offers an intimate look at her brief
life, which ended in 1970 when
she died of a brain tumor at age
34. The film features excerpts from
Hesse’s journals (read by actress
Selma Blair, a former Detroiter
and Hillel Day School student)
and from her correspondence with
close friend and mentor, minimal-
ist artist Sol LeWitt, as well as
interviews with artists Richard
Serra, Robert Mangold, Nancy
Holt, Dan Graham and more. It
also offers a fascinating glimpse
into a pivotal moment in American
art.
“She was a great artist, and
she looked at everything,” Marcie
Begleiter, the film’s director, said in
a phone interview. “She was very
well-read, and she was very well-
informed about everything that

COURTESY OF THE EVA HESSE ESTATE

The brief, big life of

Eva Hesse (second from left) with her parents and sister, Helen, in
Triton Park, NY, early 1940s

was going on. She wanted to be a
part of the conversation. There’s
pop art going on; there’s minimal-
ism going on; there are people over
on the side there doing some sur-
realist work. It was all happening
at the same time, a multitude of
ideas. And she pulled from all of
them that interested her.”
Begleiter spent five years work-
ing on the film. After seeing
reproductions of Hesse’s work, she
sought out the first book written
about the artist, by Lucy Lippard,
an art critic and a friend of Hesse’s.
It was first published in 1976 but
was long out of print. Although the
book isn’t a biography, it provides
basic biographic material, describes
Hesse’s work process, talks about

her friends and colleagues and
quotes extensively from Hesse’s
unpublished journals.
“I thought it was a really inter-
esting book and a great story about
the 1960s and this amazing woman
who was a feminist before anybody
used the word,” Begleiter said. “It
had all these amazing pieces to it,
aside from the fact that the work
blew me away. It was so original; it
was so material, it didn’t look like
anything else. It was emotional; it
was intellectual. It’s just ineffable,
the way great art is.”
About a decade ago, Begleiter
mentioned her interest in Hesse
to a friend who happened to be
an arts librarian. She in turn men-
tioned that Hesse’s archives, con-

taining more than 1,300 items, are
stored in a little museum, the Allen
Memorial Art Museum, in Oberlin,
Ohio. The museum was the first to
purchase a sculpture by Hesse, in
1970. After the artist’s death, as an
act of gratitude, her sister, Helen,
donated the artist’s notebooks, dia-
ries, sketchbooks, photographs and
letters to the museum.
At the time, Begleiter was teach-
ing film and art. She applied for a
grant and went to Oberlin, where
she donned white gloves and
sifted through hundreds of pages
of Hesse’s writing. At the end of a
week, Begleiter said, “I had really
fallen for this person who was
extraordinarily complicated and
ambitious and intelligent.”
Begleiter, who also is a play-
wright, wrote a play about Hesse
that was produced in Los Angeles
in 2010. A producer, Karen
Shapiro, saw it and brought it to a
bigger theater. Shapiro ended up
producing the documentary film,
as well.
Hesse’s sister, Helen Hesse
Charash, told Begleiter that other
people had expressed interest in
making a documentary about
her sister but had never followed
through. Begleiter realized that
many of Hesse’s contemporaries
were nearing the end of their lives.
“It felt like if we didn’t do it at