Eva Hesse, whose entire life was kind of a mess, made a piece that represented that.

She was born into a Jewish family in Nazi Germany in 1936 and her family escaped but then everything else fell apart. Her parents separated, her father got remarried, her mother commit suicide, she got married and then divorced and then she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1969. This is one of the last pieces that she created before she died but her declining health seemed to have no negative effect on her artistic ability. If anything it made her more creative. How’s that for a silver lining?

This piece is made from rope dipped in liquid latex and someday it’ll kinda just fall apart. The latex gets increasingly brittle and fragile with age so the Whitney had to create a giant crate to keep it constantly in the shape of its original creation. This, though, was not Hesse’s intention for the work. No Title (1969-70) was left hanging in Hesse’s studio when she died, with a note next to it that read, “hung irregularly tying knots as connections really letting it go as it will. Allowing it to determine more of the way it completes its self." A classic dilemma between artistic integrity and art historical preservation am I right? The preservation won, of course but Hesse felt guilty about the impermanence of her work. She said that despite buyers of her art knowing the work isn’t permanent, “[she] want[ed] to write them a letter and say it’s not going to last.” If only Hesse herself had lasted.