
Hang Up
<p>During her short career Eva Hesse explored the expressive, often eccentric possibilities of rigorous, reductive abstraction. She considered <em>Hang Up</em> to be her first significant work of art—the first to achieve the level of "absurdity or extreme feeling" she was seeking.</p><p>In the late I960s, at a moment when sculpture was supplanting painting as the avant-garde medium of choice, <em>Hang Up</em> emphasizes painting's most marginal feature, its frame. The frame here is sensitively painted but surrounds only blank wall. Instead it sprouts a generous loop of cord that protrudes at once gracefully and aggressively into the gallery space. Like a body, this strand of industrial tubing even succumbs to gravity, touching the floor.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1966
- Dimensions
- 182.9 × 213.4 × 198.1 cm (72 × 84 × 78 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Eva Hesse
Artist

Sculpture
Eva Hesse was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 1960s.
Full artist profile →More
More by Eva Hesse
Untitled
1969 · Fiberglass and polyester resin over cloth-covered metal wire with metal grommets
Untitled
1967 · Ink on paper
Sequel
1967 · Latex, pigment, and cheesecloth
Untitled
1967 · Pen and black ink on printed, ivory wove graph paper
Addendum
1967 · Papier mâché, wood and cord
Untitled
1966 · Brush and gray wash, with charcoal and graphite, on ivory wove paper
Record
Verified by WattsOSSource
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified





