Duane Hanson, (American, 1925-1995)

Duane Hanson (American,1925-1995)

Tourists II - 1988
Auto body filler,
fiberglass and mixed media
Life-size
Frankfurt am Main. Galerie
Neuendorf AG

The Artist:

Housewife
1970
Polyester and fiberglass,
polychromed in oil,
with accessories Life-size

Duane Hanson was a third-dimensial illustrator of American ordinariness in the spirit of Norman Rockwell. Hanson's life size figures are cast directly from models and completed in polychromed fiberglass or bronze and are given clothes and accessories. Hanson is a favorite of popular audiences and he wasn't exactly underrated while he lived.

Young Shopper
1973
Auto body filler,
fiberglass and mixed media
Life-size

Hanson exasperated orderly minds by neglecting to take sides in the great nineteen-sixties artistic gang war between Pop art and Minimalism (which minimalism won). Hanson thought he could inhabit both mass culture and museum culture. He did.
Hanson was born in Minnesota. After several years of teaching art in Germany, Hanson moved to Atlanta in 1960, and then to Miami where he spent the rest of his life. One of his most famous works is the sculpture "Motorcycle Accident" (1967). I have not seen it but I hear that this shock piece is enough to make you sell your bike. Hanson's pieces are very realistic. The people above were positioned in the entry of the 1994 Hanson show at the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art. I thought they were real. I had a copy of the image on my desk at work for years. When I tired of explaining what they were I just told people it was a picture of my parents.

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