Eva Hesse, No Title, 1969–1970

Narrator: To make this sculpture, Eva Hesse took knotted ropes and dipped them in liquid latex, a kind of rubber that hardens when it’s exposed to the air. Her only instructions about how to install it was that it should hang from thirteen points—but she planned to let the person hanging it decide where exactly those points should be.

Sculpture is one of the oldest art forms in the world. And from the beginning, it was meant to be solid and permanent—a good means of remembering a victory in war or a ruler who had passed away. By contrast, Hesse’s sculpture is flexible and open to change. If the old approach to sculpture was about remembering the past, maybe her work invites us to focus on what is happening right here in the present.