EXCELLENCE HAS [NO] SEX
by Michèle C. Cone
Two exhibitions, one uptown at the Jewish Museum, organized by Elisabeth Sussman and Fred Wasserman, and the other downtown at the Drawing Center, organized by Sussman and Catherine de Zegher, honor the memory of the German-born artist Eva Hesse, whose brief career as a New York artist spanned the 1960s. Weighted down by memories of flight from Nazi Germany, by her mother’s suicide, by the social displacement of her father, who once had practiced law in Hamburg, this pretty and intelligent young woman overcame both her middle-class origins and psychological hang-ups. (A room at the Jewish museum is devoted to personal memorabilia, including family photos and her father’s diaries.)
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