“There is a playful quality in 'Top Spot' — missing from most of the other reliefs — which in fact is not generally characteristic of Hesse's work... A colorful confusion of painted cords and metal conduit plays on the surface of the relief.”
A pivotal early masterwork of the artist’s revered sculptural practice, Top Spot is the final relief Hesse constructed before returning to the United States in late 1965. Starting in June 1964, Hesse embarked on a 15-month artist residency at an abandoned textile factory in Kettwig an der Ruhr, Germany at the invitation of German collects or Friedrich Arnhard Scheidt. Surrounded by obsolete machine parts and abandoned tools in the studio during the last five months of her residency, Hesse created a limited series of fourteen reliefs, still adhering to the realm of painting, yet reaching out into three-dimensional space for the first t.mes . Top Spot is the ultimate iteration of Hesse’s limited and critical suite of relief works, six of which now belong to international museum collects ions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; Tate, London; and Museum Wiesbaden. Further testifying to its significance, Top Spot has been exhibited in many of Hesse’s most paramount museum exhibitions, including Eva Hesse: Materialbilder und Zeichnungen at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in 1965 – her first exhibition of the relief series – and at Eva Hesse: A Retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 2002. The present work is also distinguished by its exceptional provenance, having previously been owned by the Estate of the Artist, Friedrich Arnhard Scheidt, – who invited Hesse to the pivotal residency in Germany – the Saatchi collects ion, and most recently, Chara Schreyer, who emphasized her captivation with this seminal work: “Is Top Spot a painting or a sculpture? It pushes itself outside of the boundaries of the canvas into the space that you’re inhabiting. Hesse exploded the boundaries between sculpture and painting and did it as a woman in an art world still dominated by men in the 1960s” (Chara Schreyer quoted in Ayla Angelos, “Making Strange: The Chara Schreyer collects ion,” Port Magazine, 14 January 2022 (online)).
Eva Hesse’s 1965 Relief Series
"Is Top Spot a painting or a sculpture? It pushes itself outside of the boundaries of the canvas into the space that you’re inhabiting. Hesse exploded the boundaries between sculpture and painting and did it as a woman in an art world still dominated by men in the 1960s.”
Constructed in July 1965 just prior to Hesse’s return to New York from Germany later that year, Top Spot enters three-dimensional space with mesmerizing, winding curves and delicate lines of cord. As the very last iteration of these iconic reliefs, Top Spot represents a pivotal juncture in Hesse’s oeuvre. Trained as a painter, Hesse’s early output included explorative drawings that have come to be known as Hesse’s ‘mechanical drawings’, investigating the synthetic structures of machine parts with elegant organic contours. Having only made one previous sculpture in 1962, the reliefs mark the groundbreaking shift from two dimensions to three dimensions. Hesse reinterpreted her drawings into these multidimensional reliefs, referencing their energetic visual elements which emphasized a kinetic experience. Speaking to this transition, Hesse wrote, “The ... transference to a large scale and in painting was always tedious. It was not natural ... so I started working in relief and with line. I would vary the cord lengths and widths and I would start with three dimensional boards and I would build them out with papier mâché or kinds of soft materials. I varied the materials a lot but the structure would always be built up with cords” (The artist quoted in conversation with Cindy Nemser, Art Talk: Conversations With 15 Women Artists, New York 1975, p. 207).
Exhibiting subtle, unwinding forms with a seemingly effortless and monochromatic surface, Top Spot represents an important conceptual breakthrough for Hesse as she begins to understand the potential of her practice as less indebted to painting than to sculpture. As critic Roberta Smith astutely observes about the present work, “In Top Spot – thought to be the last relief Hesse made before returning to New York – the artist attaches an almost chaotic array of found wooden fixtures, plastic pipe, metal conduit and clothbound cord (alternately coiled and dangling) to a green rectangle of particle board. She seems to be taking stock of her formal repertory before leaping ahead into the great unknown of three-dimensional, nonrectilinear space” (Roberta Smith, “Reviews/Art: Kinetic Sculpture Using Toys, Fire and Water,” New York t.mes s, 20 January 1989, section C, p. 24). With every wavering coil of cord in Top Spot, Hesse implies fluid gesture; affixed with such materials as clamps, screws, bolts, and pipe, Hesse’s binding of cord thoughtfully mediates form and contemplates gravity.
One of the great innovative artistic minds of the last century, Hesse produced an extraordinary body of work that collapses disciplinary boundaries and forges innovative approaches to material, form, and process. From 1957–59, Hesse attended the Yale School of Art and Architecture where she studied under Josef Albers. The reliefs, described by Linda Shearer as “Hesse's first truly original stat.mes nts...notable for their unusually acid and vibrant color” reflect Albers’ teachings; indeed, Top Spot perhaps most notably represents Albers’ Bauhaus emphasis on the value of a true understanding of the properties of materials and the principles of construction (Linda Shearer in Exh. Cat., London, The Mayor Gallery, Eva Hesse, September - October 1974, n.p.). In the present work, the relief’s initial engagement across spatial planes alludes to Hesse’s future forms and capitalizes on the ingenious manipulation of unconventional materials. Rendered with stunning shades of sea-foam green, these materials take on a new, revolutionary presence, assuming a dreamlike allusion to the ephemeral and the bodily.
“In Top Spot – thought to be the last relief Hesse made before returning to New York – the artist attaches an almost chaotic array of found wooden fixtures, plastic pipe, metal conduit and clothbound cord (alternately coiled and dangling) to a green rectangle of particle board. She seems to be taking stock of her formal repertory before leaping ahead into the great unknown of three-dimensional, nonrectilinear space."
The influence of Top Spot is evident within Hesse’s oeuvre and speaks to the momentous strides she would take as a sculptor. “There is a playful quality in Top Spot — missing from most of the other reliefs — which in fact is not generally characteristic of Hesse's work,” observes Bill Barette in the catalogue raisonné of Hesse’s sculptures. “A colorful confusion of painted cords and metal conduit plays on the surface of the relief.” (Bill Barrette, Eva Hesse Sculpture: Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1989, p. 46). Indeed, the swirling cord in the present work recurs in Hesse’s later iconic hanging rope works, which energize and command space with a palpable psychological suspense. It is this compelling tension which propels Top Spot forward as a foundational motif, captivating in its futuristic and complex rendering.
