Eighty-third connection: Connecting dots

Connecting dots during this week of Thanksgiving –going back to the summer of 1968, outside the prescribed time that Second Sight covers. I cannot pull up many of the details that lead to my going on a trip to what was then called the Milwaukee Art Center (renamed the Milwaukee Art Museum) to see the exhibition Directions 1: Options http://www.leftmatrix.com/options.html.

I think it was organized by the local recreation summer program – that met at the our elementary school. What I do remember in addition to the enthusiasm of the adult chaperone (sadly can’t recall her name) and the delight we had in interacting with many of the works in this exhibition, was my experience of seeing one particular piece. I vividly remember my surprise and interesting feeling of revulsion as I looked down into what seemed to be an ordinary- in the sense it could have had a functional purpose- a part of some machinery- that was part of the everyday but unknown- (definitely ambiguous and somewhat large- at 30”) box and saw a tightly packed mass of short "tentacles" protruding densely into its interior. Later, perhaps as a graduate student in the early 1980s, I realized this piece was Eva Hesse’s Accession II*, and its power took a new hold on me.

*image Copyright Eva Hesse from WikiArt.org https://www.wikiart.org/en/eva-hesse/accession-ii-1968