Eva Hesse: Sculpture: Catalogue Raisonne

The frequently used term ``minimalist'' doesn't really fit the most provocative of Hesse's disturbing sculptures. Long Life , for instance, conjures a womb with an umbilical cord--or is it a bomb with a fuse? A refugee from Nazi Germany who landed in a Bowery loft in New York, Hesse produced darkly disquieting collages like An Ear in a Pond ; she filled her works with jarring juxtapositions of female and male symbols. Accession II , a steel box whose interior bristles with 50,670 vinyl feelers, typifies her pure minimalist phase. But shortly before her tragic death in 1970 at age 34, she did expansive sculptures like the serene, majestic Contingent , which magically transforms latex and fiberglass into banner-like phan toms suspended in mid-air. Barrette worked as Hesse's studio assistant during the last year of her life. This volume catalogues all of her surviving work; nine-tenths of the sculptures are reproduced in color. (Apr.)