Hang Up
Date: 1966
Art Form: Installation Art
The seemingly simple addition of the long metal rod to a canvas in Hang Up dramatically transformed a painting into a sculpture, symbolizing the artist's own transition from working in two to three dimensions. Hesse called Hang Up her earliest important artistic "statement", due to its successful manifestation of her fascination with "absurdity." The wire juts out seemingly too far into the space before the "picture", and the cloth-wrapped frame of the canvas contrasts strongly with the metal loop. The soft and hard textures are subtle testaments to the self-contradictory nature of much of Hesse's sculpture, keeping any given work's meaning shrouded in mystery. The rod protruding from the canvas might even be said to evoke the erotic, as did the orbs in Ringaround Arosie.
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