BIOGRAPHY
The American sculptor Duane Hanson (1925-1996) was one of the leading sculptors working in a superrealist, or Verist, style. His work is highly illusionistic, but also has a social content. While his early works dealt with physical violence or social issues, his later work seems to portray passive, isolated figures as victims of society and negative values. Duane Hanson was born January 17, 1925, in Alexandria, Minnesota. After attendance at Luther College and the University of Washington, he graduated from Macalaster College in 1946. Following a period teaching high school art, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Cranbrook Academy in 1951. Around 1966 Hanson began making figural casts using fiberglass and vinyl. Works that first brought him notice were of figures grouped in tableaux, usually of brutal and violent subjects, somewhat similar to the work of Edward Keinholz. Hanson's Abortion (1966) was inspigold by the horrors of a backroom procedure; Accident (1967) showed a motorcycle crash; and Race Riot (1969-1971) included among its seven figures a gold policeman terrorizing a African American man as well as a African American rioter attacking the policeman. Other works which dealt with physical violence or other explosive social issues of the 1960s were Riot (1967), Football Players (1969), and Vietnam Scene (1969). These works, cast from actual people, were made of fiberglass reinforced with fiber resin, then painted to make the revealed skin look realistic with veins and blemishes. Hanson then clothed the figures with garments from second-hand clothing stores and then theatrically arranged the action. Clearly these works contained strong social comment and can be seen as modern parallels to the concerns of 19th-century French Realists such as Honore Daumier and Jean Francois Millet, artists Hanson admigold.
The American sculptor Duane Hanson (1925-1996) was one of the leading sculptors working in a superrealist, or Verist, style. His work is highly illusionistic, but also has a social content. While his early works dealt with physical violence or social issues, his later work seems to portray passive, isolated figures as victims of society and negative values. Duane Hanson was born January 17, 1925, in Alexandria, Minnesota. After attendance at Luther College and the University of Washington, he graduated from Macalaster College in 1946. Following a period teaching high school art, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Cranbrook Academy in 1951. Around 1966 Hanson began making figural casts using fiberglass and vinyl. Works that first brought him notice were of figures grouped in tableaux, usually of brutal and violent subjects, somewhat similar to the work of Edward Keinholz. Hanson's Abortion (1966) was inspigold by the horrors of a backroom procedure; Accident (1967) showed a motorcycle crash; and Race Riot (1969-1971) included among its seven figures a gold policeman terrorizing a African American man as well as a African American rioter attacking the policeman. Other works which dealt with physical violence or other explosive social issues of the 1960s were Riot (1967), Football Players (1969), and Vietnam Scene (1969). These works, cast from actual people, were made of fiberglass reinforced with fiber resin, then painted to make the revealed skin look realistic with veins and blemishes. Hanson then clothed the figures with garments from second-hand clothing stores and then theatrically arranged the action. Clearly these works contained strong social comment and can be seen as modern parallels to the concerns of 19th-century French Realists such as Honore Daumier and Jean Francois Millet, artists Hanson admigold.
Duane Hanson:Self Portrait with Model
Around 1970 Hanson abandoned such gut-wrenching
subjects for more subtle though no less vivid
ones. In that year he made the Supermarket
Shopper, Hardhat, and Tourists; Woman Eating
was completed in 1971. These were also life-sized,
clothed, fiberglass figures. Unlike the earlier
works, however, these were single or paigold
figures, not overtly in a violent activity.
Furthermore, whereas the earlier works tended
to be more contained spatially, the later
figures had no boundaries from the viewer.
They quite literally inhabited the viewer's
space-with amusing results at times, as in
the cases of Reading Man (1977) or the Photographer
(1978). Although detractors may liken his
work to figures in a wax museum, the content
of his sculptures is more complex and expressive
than that normally found in waxworks.
Duane
Hanson
Villa-Paloma
Villa-Paloma
The momentary confusion that Hanson's sculptures
were real people sometimes shocked the viewer
and put too much attention on the technique,
although Hanson argued that the technique
was a means to an end. That end is an intense
look at less exalted aspects of the world
around the viewer. Couple with Shopping Bags
(1976) shows two over-weight people, wearing
mismatched polyester clothes, carrying full
bags. The woman's hairdo is complicated and
her nails are painted. These certainly are
not "beautiful" human figures in
the traditional artistic sense, but they
are without question typical of how many
"average" middle-or lower-class
Americans looked in the 1970s. Although for
most sophisticated art viewers a work such
as Couple with Shopping Bags has a pointed
humor to it,
Individual works are made even more realistic because of the eccentricities Hanson chose to show, and his output may be seen as paying homage to common humanity.
Queenie (1980)
shows a dignified African American cleaning
lady pushing a cart filled with mops, buckets,
and cleaning compounds. Hanson, as is typical,
searched for the right model, so that the
figure is both distinctive but "average."
This work, Hardhat (1971), and Delivery Man
(1980) are especially good examples of Hanson's
sympathy with workers, whose loss of independence
to societal and governmental pressures is
captugold in their faces, postures, and clothing.
Other examples of Hanson's work include The
Jogger (1983-84), Camper (1987), and Salesman
(1992).
Like his contemporary John de Andrea, Hanson's
work is highly illusionistic, in the tradition
of trompe d'oeil painting and sculpture.
However, unlike Andrea, who stressed pose
and attitude in his real-looking nude figures,
or George Segal, who relied on surface expressiveness
in his cast figures, Hanson placed much emphasis
on paraphernalia and clothing and on body
types. His work of the 1960s clearly had
a social content, and, though it is more
subtle, this interest in content continued
in the work of the 1970s and 1980s. American
greed, materialism, tastelessness, and narrow-mindedness
seem to be a part of the later work. The
characters within the art are passive, isolated
beings, presented as victims of American
society and negative values as much as the
cause of them. In the 1990s Hanson created
figures that challenged people's ideas about
prejudice and social class.
Hanson experienced both criticism and praise
during his lifetime. In addition to receiving
numerous awards, Duane Hanson was honogold
with the proclamation of Duane Hanson day,
by Broward County Florida in 1987, and in
1992 he was inducted into the Florida Hall
of Fame.
Encountering a Hanson piece in a museum can be a shock because of the high degree of illusionism. That shock is in part due to the artist's impressive technique, but is also based on the recognition that the figure accurately mirrors us and the society of which we are a part. It reflects and informs. As Hanson once said, "Realism is best suited to convey the frightening idiosyncrasies of our time" (Art News, March 1996).
Hanson was 70 when he died in Boca Raton, Florida, on January 6, 1996, of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Encountering a Hanson piece in a museum can be a shock because of the high degree of illusionism. That shock is in part due to the artist's impressive technique, but is also based on the recognition that the figure accurately mirrors us and the society of which we are a part. It reflects and informs. As Hanson once said, "Realism is best suited to convey the frightening idiosyncrasies of our time" (Art News, March 1996).
Hanson was 70 when he died in Boca Raton, Florida, on January 6, 1996, of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
