Lot Essay
Eva Hesse completed Vinculum I in March 1969, the last full year of her life. Only days after finishing the piece, she collapsed from the brain tumor that would finally kill her in May 1970. Although she was fatally ill when she made Vinculum I, it is one of her most powerful sculptures, and it has received great critical attention ever since it was shown at the important exhibition Anti-Illusion at the Whitney Museum in 1969. Its combination of primitive form and sophisticated materials, its use of pathetic color and anatomical imagery and its grim physicality and evocative literary title typify the very best characteristics of Hesse's work.
At the end of her life Hesse was forced, for the first time, to use assistants to make her sculptures; she found the collaborative process liberating. She explained:
Prior to that time the process of my work used to take a long time. First because I did most of it myself, and, when I planned the larger pieces and worked with someone, they were more formalistic. Then when we started working less formalistically, or with greater chance, the whole process became speeded up. (Quoted in B. Barrette, op. cit, p. 210)
With respect to Vinculum I, she elaborated:
Vinculum I, it took a very short time. It was a very complex piece, but the whole attitude was different... That was one of the last pieces that I did before I got so ill. It was one of the pieces we worked on with less plan. I just described the vague idea to two people I worked with and we went and just started doing it. (Quoted in ibid., p. 210)
Hesse made two versions of the sculpture. The first, confusingly titled Vinculum II, is now in The Museum of Modern Art (fig. 1). It is dramatically different from Vinculum I. Comprised of twenty-three plaques of latex and mesh stapled to wire, with rubber extrusions hanging from each plaque, it was conceived to hang as a loaded net structure. Comparing the two works, Hesse noted that Vinculum I is "solid and staid and inflexible, except for the hose, while Vinculum II, though very similar, is totally flexible" (quoted in ibid., p. 208) and Barrette says of the Vinculum sculptures:
...[the] dangling cords that were so conspicuous in her work before 1968 are reintroduced here to give the sculpture its emotive charge. At the same time they accentuate the aura of radical fragility that surrounds the piece. (Ibid., p. 208)
What does the title Vinculum mean? There are several possibilities. Beginning in 1966, Hesse collected mathematical terms to use as titles of her works. In math, a vinculum is a straight line drawn over two or more terms, denoting that these are to be considered subject to the same operations of multiplication, division, etc., by another term. (In anatomy it is a ligament or frenum.) Robert Pincus-Witten, in 1972, recognized the mathematical source but mused that "it also carries with it the forceful name of Vulcan smashing at his forge and the idea of the vincible (invincible) as well" (R. Pincus-Witten, "Rosenquist and Samaras: The Obsessive Image and Post Minimalism," Artforum, Sept. 1972, vol. 2, no. 1, pp.64-69).
There is yet another possibility. Vinculum is the Latin word for chain, and the units of the two ladder-like sections of the sculpture resemble the links of a chain, as does Sans III (fig. 2), executed in the same year. Hesse may have felt an attraction to this title because of its suggestion of formal repetition and concatenation. Moreover, as Hesse certainly knew from her interest in classical culture, ladders are suggestive both of the Great Chain of Being that connects heaven and earth and of the mind's ascent above the world of mutable appearances to that of pure form. To a sculptor rooted in minimalism and fascinated by the possibilities of anti-illusionism, this association of ideas may have had great appeal, especially as she was faced with her own mortality at the time that she was making the sculpture.
Hesse used fiberglass and polyester resin in many of her late sculptures including Vinculum, Sans II (fig. 3) and Sans III. This material has a color and sheen similar to that of human skin, and yet it is industrial, man-made, not neutral. An association with human form is thus both evoked and denied.
On the place of the sculpture in the evolution of Hesse's oeuvre, Linda Shearer has written:
Vinculum I marks the resolution of a formal problem she had first confronted in 1965 with Ishtar [see Lot 21, fig. 2] and later in 1966 with Ennead [Lot 16]... With Vinculum I, the forms have become flat rectangular configurations, the grid has been complicated and made irregular; the flexible rubber tubing, replacing the string, progresses from the top of the "ladder" with a neat geometric organization, only to collapse in a heap on the floor. Significantly, the piece is propped casually against the wall in contrast to previous reliefs which are to be hung. That Hesse was capable of this liberty only confirms the open (and radical) approach to sculpture which she had so emphatically defined by this time in her career. (L. Shearer, exh. cat., Eva Hesse: A Memorial Exhibition, New York, 1972)
Robert Smithson, a close friend of the artist, has written about Vinculum I:
Trellises are mummified, nets contain dessicated lumps, wires extend from tightly wrapped frameworks, a cosmic dereliction is the general effect... Her art brings to mind the obsessions of the pharaohs, but in this case the anthropomorphic measure is absent. Nothing is incarnated into nothing. (Quoted in ed. N. Holt, The Writings of Robert Smithson, New York, 1979, pp. 32-35)
(fig. 1) Eva Hesse, Vinculum II, 1969
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(fig. 2) Eva Hesse, Sans III, 1969
Estate of Eva Hesse, New York
(fig. 3) Eva Hesse, Sans II, 1969
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Private Collections
At the end of her life Hesse was forced, for the first time, to use assistants to make her sculptures; she found the collaborative process liberating. She explained:
Prior to that time the process of my work used to take a long time. First because I did most of it myself, and, when I planned the larger pieces and worked with someone, they were more formalistic. Then when we started working less formalistically, or with greater chance, the whole process became speeded up. (Quoted in B. Barrette, op. cit, p. 210)
With respect to Vinculum I, she elaborated:
Vinculum I, it took a very short time. It was a very complex piece, but the whole attitude was different... That was one of the last pieces that I did before I got so ill. It was one of the pieces we worked on with less plan. I just described the vague idea to two people I worked with and we went and just started doing it. (Quoted in ibid., p. 210)
Hesse made two versions of the sculpture. The first, confusingly titled Vinculum II, is now in The Museum of Modern Art (fig. 1). It is dramatically different from Vinculum I. Comprised of twenty-three plaques of latex and mesh stapled to wire, with rubber extrusions hanging from each plaque, it was conceived to hang as a loaded net structure. Comparing the two works, Hesse noted that Vinculum I is "solid and staid and inflexible, except for the hose, while Vinculum II, though very similar, is totally flexible" (quoted in ibid., p. 208) and Barrette says of the Vinculum sculptures:
...[the] dangling cords that were so conspicuous in her work before 1968 are reintroduced here to give the sculpture its emotive charge. At the same time they accentuate the aura of radical fragility that surrounds the piece. (Ibid., p. 208)
What does the title Vinculum mean? There are several possibilities. Beginning in 1966, Hesse collected mathematical terms to use as titles of her works. In math, a vinculum is a straight line drawn over two or more terms, denoting that these are to be considered subject to the same operations of multiplication, division, etc., by another term. (In anatomy it is a ligament or frenum.) Robert Pincus-Witten, in 1972, recognized the mathematical source but mused that "it also carries with it the forceful name of Vulcan smashing at his forge and the idea of the vincible (invincible) as well" (R. Pincus-Witten, "Rosenquist and Samaras: The Obsessive Image and Post Minimalism," Artforum, Sept. 1972, vol. 2, no. 1, pp.64-69).
There is yet another possibility. Vinculum is the Latin word for chain, and the units of the two ladder-like sections of the sculpture resemble the links of a chain, as does Sans III (fig. 2), executed in the same year. Hesse may have felt an attraction to this title because of its suggestion of formal repetition and concatenation. Moreover, as Hesse certainly knew from her interest in classical culture, ladders are suggestive both of the Great Chain of Being that connects heaven and earth and of the mind's ascent above the world of mutable appearances to that of pure form. To a sculptor rooted in minimalism and fascinated by the possibilities of anti-illusionism, this association of ideas may have had great appeal, especially as she was faced with her own mortality at the time that she was making the sculpture.
Hesse used fiberglass and polyester resin in many of her late sculptures including Vinculum, Sans II (fig. 3) and Sans III. This material has a color and sheen similar to that of human skin, and yet it is industrial, man-made, not neutral. An association with human form is thus both evoked and denied.
On the place of the sculpture in the evolution of Hesse's oeuvre, Linda Shearer has written:
Vinculum I marks the resolution of a formal problem she had first confronted in 1965 with Ishtar [see Lot 21, fig. 2] and later in 1966 with Ennead [Lot 16]... With Vinculum I, the forms have become flat rectangular configurations, the grid has been complicated and made irregular; the flexible rubber tubing, replacing the string, progresses from the top of the "ladder" with a neat geometric organization, only to collapse in a heap on the floor. Significantly, the piece is propped casually against the wall in contrast to previous reliefs which are to be hung. That Hesse was capable of this liberty only confirms the open (and radical) approach to sculpture which she had so emphatically defined by this time in her career. (L. Shearer, exh. cat., Eva Hesse: A Memorial Exhibition, New York, 1972)
Robert Smithson, a close friend of the artist, has written about Vinculum I:
Trellises are mummified, nets contain dessicated lumps, wires extend from tightly wrapped frameworks, a cosmic dereliction is the general effect... Her art brings to mind the obsessions of the pharaohs, but in this case the anthropomorphic measure is absent. Nothing is incarnated into nothing. (Quoted in ed. N. Holt, The Writings of Robert Smithson, New York, 1979, pp. 32-35)
(fig. 1) Eva Hesse, Vinculum II, 1969
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(fig. 2) Eva Hesse, Sans III, 1969
Estate of Eva Hesse, New York
(fig. 3) Eva Hesse, Sans II, 1969
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Private Collections