Preserving the Legacy of 'Hesse'

Helen Charash’s maiden name is Hesse, yet when she speaks of the life and art of her sister, Eva, she refers to the subject as “Hesse,” an entity separate from her family name and the little sister she knew so well. That she does so says much about Hesse’s legendary status in the art world and in the popular imagination.

In a recent conversation, Ms. Charash, who is a part-time East Hampton resident, said she was “a housewife with young children, and not in the art world,” when her sister died in 1970 of a brain tumor at the age of 34. At that time, Hesse was revered in the art world, channeling the best of Process and Minimalist art into her work. She left the job of managing her estate to Ms. Charash, who continues to do so with the help of advisers such as Barry Rosen, an independent art consultant, and Hauser & Wirth, a gallery that represents the estate.

Ms. Charash is featured in the documentary “Eva Hesse,” which will be screened at the Southampton Arts Center tomorrow. The release of the film last year coincided with the publication of Hesse’s diaries, which date from her early years through her struggle and success in finding her voice as an artist to the last few weeks of her life.

The sisters’ childhood was marked by a frightening escape from Nazi Germany to a Catholic children’s home in Holland when Eva was 3 and Helen was 5. It was months before they would be reunited with their parents. In 1939, they immigrated to the United States. Their mother committed suicide in 1946, when Eva was only 10.

Asked how she handled the tragic events of her past, Ms. Charash said, “You just have to live your daily life. Both Eva and I had our baggage, which for me has stretched into being a senior citizen. I still think about it and how our regular experience as kids is very different from life today.”

Hesse knew early that she wanted to be an artist. Her father was displeased, but it didn’t stop her. She attended Pratt, Cooper Union, and then Yale, where she studied with Josef Albers. She returned to New York City in 1960 and found herself at the center of a group of young artists who arrived there at the same time.

The filmmakers interviewed contemporaries such as Robert and Sylvia Mangold and Richard Serra. Letters to Hesse from Sol LeWitt, a close friend who died in 2007, are quoted. He was a fierce supporter and booster of her work, encouraging her through both blocks and breakthroughs throughout her life.

Although LeWitt loved her, she married Tom Doyle, a sculptor. Doyle, who died last year, became a drinker and womanizer, and they separated in 1966 after four years. “It was a mismatched intense love affair,” Ms. Charash said. There was a lot of bitterness, and Hesse wouldn’t grant him a divorce. But when she died, Doyle relinquished all claims to the estate and remarried. 

At a 1992 Hesse retrospective exhibition at Yale, Ms. Charash said, she reconnected with him, and they stayed on good terms; her kids always loved him. He is featured in the film in interviews and old film clips. The publication of Hesse’s diaries, while much sought by scholars and publishers, was delayed until after his death in deference to him.

Lucy Lippard, an art historian and critic who was an early advocate and author of a monograph on the artist, says in the film that Doyle “was part of a wild crowd,” but that “he gave her something that she needed.” In the early years of their relationship, he was very committed to her and even converted to Judaism to please her father. During their marriage, Doyle was invited to work and exhibit in Germany and Hesse joined him. Returning to Germany was traumatic for her, but it led to a big breakthrough in her work. 

They were given studio space in an old fabric factory, and the abandoned materials she found there began to make their way into her art. In the film, she is described as a post-Abstract Expressionist painter before Germany and a Surrealist when she returned to New York, where Minimalism was taking over. “I don’t mind being miles from everybody else,” she says in the film through a voiceover provided by Selma Blair. 

Michael Todd, a fellow artist, notes in the film that her new work referenced the figure, eroticism, and the body. Yet, she did not disengage from contemporary practice, incorporating the same industrial materials into her work. Ms. Lippard said she took “cold hard grids” of Minimalism “and messed with them, screwed them up a bit.”

Donald Droll, the director of the Fischbach Gallery, gave her a show in its main room in 1968. He was a champion of her work and would become the main adviser for the estate until his death in 1985.

Hesse was then introduced to Aegis Reinforced Plastics, a company working with artists to fabricate work. There, she discovered epoxies, polymers, and latex. In a piece called “Repetition 19,” she formed 19 cylinders in fabric and coated them with fiberglass. Her first effort was too perfect so she started over, this time deforming each cylinder slightly and getting her hands involved with the work.

In a journal entry read in the film she lists the new materials she is using: rubber, plastic, organic and inorganic polymers, rubberized fabric, and cheesecloth, and revels in her discovery of them. She was warned about the transitory nature of some of the materials, but that only added to their appeal.

In 1969, she began to have horrible headaches, which eventually caused hospitalization. Her doctors discovered and successfully removed a large tumor. Her friends wondered if the new materials were to blame for the illness. Those interviewed in the film discredit the theory, but Ms. Charash is not so sure. “I’d like to think it’s a piece of the puzzle,” she said in our interview.

Although Hesse painted for a time during her recovery, she went back to working at Aegis and began dipping cord and rope into latex. “Untitled (Rope Piece),” part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s collection, was one of her final sculptures. She returned to the hospital in March 1970 and died that May. Ms. Charash noted that the circle drawings and window paintings she made while she was likely contemplating her mortality “have achieved great prominence. I think of them as sacred works.”

It’s not easy for her to revisit the past. She has a copy of the journals on her bedside table, but hasn’t read them all the way through, preferring to skip around when she is feeling up to it. Yet, she enjoyed making the film and marveled at the tenacity of the filmmakers, Marcie Begleiter, the director, and Karen Shapiro, the producer, in tracking everyone down, including Hesse’s doctor and her many friends and associates.

Through the years there have been several major traveling exhibitions of Hesse’s work and the publication of two volumes of a catalogue raisonné, one for the paintings and one for the sculpture. Two further volumes documenting her works on paper are expected soon. 

“Everyone who gets involved with one of these projects gets smitten by her personal connection to the art, her sensitivity, her life force, her strength.” She makes those who didn’t know her wish they had, Ms. Charash said.

The film will be shown at 7 p.m., and tickets are $8.

The text has been modified from the print version to correct an error made in editing the article. Helen Charash is not an artist.