Press Release
DUANE HANSON
2 June – 13 September 2015
Serpentine Sackler Gallery
Self Portrait with Model, 1979
The Serpentine presents the work of late American sculptor Duane Hanson
(1925-1996) in his first survey show in London since 1997. Throughout his
forty-year career, Hanson created lifelike sculptures portraying working-class
Americans and overlooked members of society. Reminiscent of the Pop Art
movement of the time, his sculptures transform the banalities and trivialities
of everyday life into iconographic material. The exhibition at the Serpentine
Sackler Gallery presents key works from the artist’s oeuvre.
Hanson’s early works comprised life-sized tableaux – depicting soldiers killed
in action, police brutality and homeless people – that confront the viewer with
devastating truths. Widespread criticism of his work Abortion in 1965
encouraged Hanson to formulate his social and political views as sculptures.
In the following years, and in the spirit of protest movements of the time, he
created sculptures that dealt with social misery and violence. From the late
1960s his work shifted to depicting everyday people, with some satirical
aspects, creating figures that could be conceived as representative of an
entire labour force, class or even a nation. Beginning with Football Players in
1968, Hanson produced sculptures that represent typical Americans,
concentrating on “those that do not stand out”, including Man with Hand Cart
(1975), Housepainter (1984/1988) and Queenie II (1988), all of which are
included in the Serpentine exhibition. The hyper-realistic nature of the
sculptures results directly from Hanson’s artistic approach. Using polyester
resin, he cast figures from live models in his studio, paying attention to every
detail, from body hair to veins and bruises. The sculptures were assembled,
adapted and finished meticulously, with the artist hand-picking clothes and
accessories.
Julia Peyton-Jones, Director, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director,
Serpentine Galleries, said: “Duane Hanson’s iconic sculptures of ordinary
people will literally stop visitors in their tracks this summer. Beyond the
stunning realism, the power of Hanson’s work lies in his unwavering focus on
and sympathy for the human condition.”
To accompany his exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery the Duane
Hanson Estate has generously given 10 original Polaroid photographs which
feature a mixture of the original models used to inform a number of Hanson’s
most notable pieces, and the pieces themselves installed in the artist’s studio.
For more information, please visit serpentinegalleries.org/shop
The summer season at the Serpentine includes the concurrent exhibition of
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings at the Serpentine Gallery, the 15th
birthday of the Serpentine Pavilion commission, which opens to the public
on 25 June and the Park Nights series of live events.
For press information contact:
Miles Evans, milese@serpentinegalleries.org, +44 (0)20 7298 1544
V Ramful, v@serpentinegalleries.org, +44 (0)20 7298 1519
Press images at serpentinegalleries.org/about/press-page
Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA
Serpentine Sackler Gallery, West Carriage Drive, Kensington Gardens, London
W2 2AR
Note to editors:
Duane Hanson was born in 1925 in Alexandria, Minnesota, and died in 1996 in
Boca Raton, Florida. Solo exhibitions include Louisiana Museum of Modern Art,
Humlebæk, Denmark, 1975; Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, 1977; Corcoran Gallery
of Art, Washington, DC, 1978; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York,
1979; Kunsthaus Wien, Austria, 1992; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada,
1994 (travelled to Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas); Daimaru Museum
of Art, Tokyo, 1995 (travelled to Genichiro-Inkuma Museum of Contemporary
Art, Kagawa, and Kintetsu Museum of Art, Osaka); Saatchi Gallery, London,
1997; Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 1998 (travelled to Flint Institute
of Arts, Michigan; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Memphis
Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis); and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 2001
(travelled to Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan; Kunsthal Rotterdam,
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, and Kunsthaus Zürich).
Image Credit:
Duane Hanson
Self Portrait with Model, 1979
©The Estate of Duane Hanson
Courtesy the Estate of Duane Hanson and Gagosian Gallery
Photography by Alan Ginsburg, Hamburg
Duane Hanson
2 June – 13 September 2015, Serpentine Sackler Gallery
List of Works
Trash 1967
Polyester resin and fibreglass, mixed media, with accessories
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Photograph: Rob McKeever
Man with Hand Cart 1975
Polyester resin and fibreglass, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Photograph: Rob McKeever
Children Playing Game 1979
Polyvinyl, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Photograph: Rob McKeever
Self-Portrait with Model 1979
Polyvinyl, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Cowboy 1984/1995
Autobody filler, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Photograph: Rob McKeever
House Painter I 1984/1988
Autobody filler, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Queenie II 1988
Autobody filler, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Lunchbreak 1989
Polyvinyl, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Flea Market Lady 1990/1994*
Edition 4/4 (unique editions)
Bronze, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
Collection of Gilbert Costes
Photo: Florian Kleinefenn
Image courtesy of Galerie Perrotin
Homeless Person 1991*
Autobody filler, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
Collection Hannes von Goesseln at Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg
Photograph: Galerie Neuendorf
Old Couple on a Bench 1994
Edition 1/2 (unique editions)
Bronze, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Baby in Stroller 1995
Polyvinyl, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Photograph: Rob McKeever
Man on Mower 1995
Edition 1/3 (unique editions)
Bronze, polychromed in oil, with lawn mower
The Estate of Duane Hanson
Directors’ Foreword
In the turmoil of everyday life, we too
seldom become aware of one another.
In the quiet moments in which you
observe my work, maybe you will
recognize the universality of all people.
Duane Hanson1
Over the course of his lifetime,
Duane Hanson (1925–1996) created
extraordinary figures: life-size
sculptures of human beings, described
in minute detail, dressed in real
clothes and often placed alongside
real objects. For the most part they
were cast from models, however
these figures are not portraits of
individuals. Hanson sought to
produce characters representative
of people from all walks of life,
imbued with a sense of internal
narrative that encourages a level
of observation bordering on voyeurism. The experience of viewing
these works is one of both pleasure
and discomfort.
This exhibition is a survey of some
of the key works produced by Hanson
throughout his career. In his first
works from the 1960s, Hanson’s
sensitivity to the political and
social upheavals unfolding in the
7
United States found direct expression in sculptures that brought the
outside world into the art gallery.
The earliest piece in the exhibition
at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery
is the shocking Trash (1967), which
includes a dead newborn baby in
a rubbish bin. During the 1970s
Hanson turned from overt violence
to the isolation and fatigue suffered
by figures that were more familiar
and, therefore, more overlooked.
The Man with Hand Cart (1975)
lost in thought; the workers relaxing in Lunchbreak (1989); and the
despairing Homeless Person (1991)
are arresting firstly because of their
ordinariness and because we are
able to observe them without interrupting their reverie. Painstakingly
produced but apparently captured
in a single moment, the humanity
of Hanson’s sculptures surprises
and disarms us at every turn. We
are constantly forced to reassess
what is real and what is not, and
we are left with a new awareness
of ourselves, as well as a renewed
curiosity in and sympathy for our
fellow humans.
Hanson’s steadfast adherence to
the realistic production of the
human body in a period when
the notion of figurative art was
generally viewed with scepticism
has earned him great respect, and
his influence on younger generations
of artists should not be underestimated. Contemporary explorations
into ways of addressing the human
figure take up Hanson’s prediction
that ‘the art of the future will
reflect a [greater] reliance on technology’,2 with artists using new
materials and new processes such
as High-Definition digital avatars
and 3D printing.
This exhibition could not have been
possible without the assistance of
a number of individuals. We are
indebted to the artist’s wife Wesla
Hanson, his children Maja Hanson
Currier and Duane Hanson Jr., and
daughter-in-law Shannon Hanson
at The Estate of Duane Hanson
for their enthusiasm for this exhibition and for working with us on
so many important aspects of its
presentation. Their generosity in
donating a series of unique Polaroids
to become a Limited Edition is
remarkable and we cannot thank
them enough.
The Lars Windhorst Foundation
has generously supported the summer season across the Serpentine
Galleries for which we are extremely
thankful. It is the second year that
the Foundation’s substantial donation has enabled us to present an
historical exhibition in dialogue
with a young British artist. We are
extremely grateful for the Foundation’s
ongoing commitment.
We express our gratitude to Phillips
for their invaluable contribution to
this exhibition. We would also like
to thank Gagosian Gallery for their
support and, in particular, Andy
Avini and Martha Blakey for their
hard work and assistance.
In addition we thank the Duane
Hanson Exhibition Circle and
the Americas Foundation of the
Serpentine Galleries for their
support, which has been crucial
to the realisation of this project.
Our thanks are extended to the
generous lenders to the exhibition:
Gilbert Costes, The Estate of
Duane Hanson and Gagosian Gallery,
and Hannes von Goesseln whom we
also thank for his wonderful insight
and advice.
The public funding that the
Serpentine receives through Arts
Council England provides an
important contribution towards
all of the Galleries’ work and we
remain very appreciative of their
continued commitment.
The Council of the Serpentine is an
extraordinary group that provides
essential ongoing support to the
Galleries that ensures the continued
success of the institution. The
Learning Council, Patrons, Future
Contemporaries and Benefactors
are also key supporters of the
Serpentine’s programme and we
thank them.
Our sincere thanks go to Ruba
Katrib, whose insightful essay in
this publication provides important
links between Hanson’s practice
and its relationship to ongoing
concerns about the presence of the
body in contemporary art. Thanks
also go to Douglas Coupland, who
has written a personal response to
Hanson’s work that is a testament
to its enduring legacy.
Julia Peyton-Jones
Director, Serpentine Galleries
and Co-Director, Exhibitions
and Programmes
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Co-Director, Exhibitions and
Programmes and Director of
International Projects
This book has been designed by
Brendan Dugan and we are indebted
to him and to his colleagues for
helping to produce such a beautiful
and unique publication.
Finally, we would like to thank
the Serpentine team: Jochen Volz,
8
Head of Programmes; Rebecca
Lewin, Exhibitions Curator;
Melissa Blanchflower, Assistant
Curator; Mike Gaughan, Gallery
Manager and Joel Bunn, Installation
and Production Manager have all
worked closely with the wider
Serpentine Galleries staff to realise
this exhibition and we are most
grateful for their hard work and
dedication.
9
1. Unpublished. Written in Davie, Florida, 1993
2. Unpublished. Written in Davie, Florida, c.1982
Surface Identity
by Ruba Katrib
Duane Hanson made people.
He fixated on the mundane individuality of janitors and shoppers,
tourists and the elderly, primarily
members of the working class.
The skin of his figures, largely
made out of polyester resin, and
their real clothes, gives them a
veracity that permits us to examine
intimately those whom we might
otherwise only furtively watch;
Hanson indulges our perverse
pleasure in being able to look at
the overweight woman with the
stroller without worrying that
she will return our impolite gaze.
We might even experience the thrill
of thinking the figures are alive,
and then realising that they are art.
For some, there is a confrontation
with those whom they might not
usually notice. Perhaps for others,
the voyeuristic thrill is translated
into dull dis­comfort: ‘I must now
consider this person.’ In either case,
the average American is isolated and
memorialised in Hanson’s work.
The surfaces of human bodies have
been etched into marble and cast
in bronze over centuries of sculpture production. These traditional
artworks, while achieving a close
resemblance in terms of form, have
also maintained a distancing effect;
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whether figurative or abstract, a
marble or bronze statue isn’t meant
to fool. However, in the last decades,
bodies have been rendered with
materials more closely resembling
flesh. Plastics, silicones and other
synthetic substances have contributed
to new material relationships. Instead
of focusing on the form of the body
and on its shape as indicator of
subject, there is now an interest in
its material composition. In Hanson’s
work, the polyester resin he used could
convincingly mimic the translucence
of real skin.
Writing in the 1950s, Roland Barthes
addressed the ubiquity of new synthetic materials and their impact on
notions of humanness: ‘The hierarchy
of substances is abolished: a single
one replaces them all: the whole
world can be plasticised, and even
life itself since, we are told, they are
beginning to make plastic aortas.’1
Concurrently, Marcel Duchamp’s
wedding gift for his new bride
Teeny Matisse, Coin de chasteté
(Wedge of Chastity) (1954) is a
bronze block jammed into a pink
chunk of dental plastic to conceal a
delicately crafted vagina. This work
was part of a group of three erotic
sculptures, including Feuille de vigne
femelle (Female Fig Leaf) (1950) and
Objet-dard (Dart Object) (1951).2
These are mostly bronze casts, but
with Wedge of Chastity, the introduction of the dental plastic as raw
material to represent flesh marks a
significant precursor to the use of
plastics and synthetic compounds
to represent organic forms in cotemporary art. The synthetic substance
used to take the impression of the
mouth in a dentist’s office easily
and humorously transforms into a
fleshy vagina. Using the pink plastic
as shorthand for skin, Duchamp
anticipated the use of new materials
as signifiers for the texture of the
body, rather than relying on its form.
In Hanson’s exhibition catalogues,
including this one, there are often
images documenting the making of
his sculptures, revealing the intensive
casting process, the attention paid
to the painstaking details, the loving
touches made to complete his figures.
Through these images we see that
they not only undergo demanding
moulding and casting processes, but
that they also go through wardrobe,
hair and makeup with the addition
of eyelashes, real clothes, wigs
and props. For Hanson, working
in the 1970s and 1980s, identity is
expressed through skin colour and
clothing, products and tools; the
clothes, food and objects with which
his figures interact emphasises their
dependency on these articles to
construct their individuality. Using
the garments of the time, he placed
his sculptures in a cultural moment.
A prominent section of this
publication also shows previously
unprinted documentation of viewers coming face to face with the
sculptures – encounters full of
surprise, scrutiny and interest.
That his figures provoke this wonder
touches on an essential dynamic
of Hanson’s work: his sculptures
are so straightforward that they are
disarming; we want to understand
how they came into being and
how they operate in the world.
The attraction of Hanson’s figures
lies in the fact that they are familiar
and fully realised, yet lifeless.
Building up his sculptures piece
by piece until they became legible
as contemporary subjects, he removed
the distancing effects found in
most sculptural representations of
the human body. In this sense, his
works follow a different trajectory
from that of the monument and
portraiture. They are too close to
real, eliminating the space required
for interpretation. By making these
sculptures, which speak in the
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language of monuments and statues, so accurate, with their bad
hair and flawed skin, that they
can momentarily trick the viewer
into thinking they are real, Hanson
creates a distinct break from historic,
idealised representations. This marks
a transition between the illusion
of the body as one single chunk,
as in historical sculpture, into the
increasingly fragmented body of
much recent contemporary art.
He also touches on the identity
construction that would come
to define the works of the 1990s,
and which in a sense re-aggrandise
their subjects as representative
individuals.
Most of the subjects depicted in
Hanson’s sculptures are everyday
people, workers and consumers.
Intent on articulating a notion of
averageness and an awareness
of those people who comprise
the margins of society, Hanson
emphasises that these are not heroic
figures. They aren’t special. Their
individuality isn’t remarkable – they
are meant to live in the crowd – an
element underscored when they are
seen in a busy gallery. They can be
disregarded, perhaps even discarded.
This is particularly true of an
explicitly disturbing early sculpture
129
included in the exhibition – a suffocated foetus in a trashcan – which
colours our view of Hanson’s other
works depicting destitute individuals
and violent scenes. A figure among
other objects – an old egg carton
and umbrella – the body in this work
takes on the same status as the debris
with which it has been thrown.
Hanson’s figures are immediately
legible in terms of surface, straightforward proclamations of character:
I am a shopper, I am a janitor, I am
a tourist. Their identity can be taken
for granted: they fulfil a simple role,
satisfying expectations through their
veracity. Surface markers are central:
it’s all happening on the exterior.
We can only imagine their interior
states, which are locked away, as they
are for their counterparts on the
street. The superficiality of the works
uncovers attitudes about identity at
the time that they were made, and
reveals much about how identity is
constructed now.
In the 1980s and 90s, artists such
as Charles Ray and Robert Gober,
who also mimic flesh in their sculptures, truncated and rescaled the
figure to create uncanny effects.
The body was seen in pieces, or
distorted Hanson’s investigation of
the complete, realistic body has not
reappeared as a subject in contemporary art, although his fixation on
identity through material construction
has become a central aspect of several
artists’ works.
Today, the representation of the body
has become even more abstracted.
With new synthetics and production
processes, rendering the body has
changed. Skin has become malleable
material. And identity construction,
while still connected to superficial
markers such as ethnicity and
clothing, has become more fluid.
The intimacy shared with synthetic
substances has now become an
acknowledged aspect of identity
construction, one necessarily investigated by artists who address
bodily forms. Current artists have
represented body politics through
a deeper understanding of biology,
technology and the porousness of
the body as comprised through effects and substances, many of which
are invisible. Articulating identity
through the material of skin, for
example, Pamela Rosenkranz has
turned flesh into a substance that
is no longer tied to the armature of
the skeleton. Anicka Yi identifies
individuals through bacteria samples.
Frank Benson depicts the human
form as anatomically correct and
hyper-real, but charges it with
contemporary identity expressions.
Benson’s sculptures are more in
line with Hanson’s, in that they are
technically sophisticated renderings
of actual bodies. Juliana (2015) is a
3D-printed nude figure of transsexual artist Juliana Huxtable reclining
on a plinth. Though the sculpture is
technically exact, the skin is painted
with a bluish green iridescent paint,
almost resembling the surface of a
car. Thus Benson has transformed
the portrait into commodity, despite
its likeness. Rosenkranz pours
Dragon Skin, a silicone rubber
used to mimic skin in special effects
and prosthesis, into water bottles
and sneakers. Taking a substance
that can so closely resemble skin
– translucent and dyed a range of
tones – and turning it into product,
Rosenkranz also addresses the
merging of identity and body with
commodity. She has stated her interest in how synthetic substances such
as hormones and plastics leeching
into our water supplies impact the
body, contributing to our sense of
self.3 Our clothing choices might be
affected less by how we see ourselves
in the world, and more by the chemicals we regularly and unknowingly
130
ingest. Anicka Yi has created a
portrait of 100 women by gathering
skin swabs. Combining them into a
single large-scale Petri dish, Yi has
formed a sculptural group portrait
using human bacteria. The identity of the body is provisional and
transformable, impacted by, as well
as impacting on, the material world
it inhabits. Identity is increasingly
linked, not only to background,
ethnicity, and gender, but also to
chemicals and clothes. It is now
increasingly malleable, as is the
representation of the human form.
In Hanson’s sculptures, the body
is seen not as a commodity itself,
but in relationship with commodities. It is viewed as separate from
the accessories around it, buying,
wearing and using these products,
not yet fully integrating them.
The consumer, like the overweight
woman in Supermarket Shopper (1970),
is still seen as independent from
the goods she acquires. She is still
behind the wheel, seemingly in control of the things she is selecting, in
contrast with today’s articulations
of the body, which bear witness to
the merging of corpus, identity and
product. In Hanson’s works, there
remains a gap between the body
and things.
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1. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, (New York:
Hill and Wang, 2012) p.195.
2. Helen Molesworth (ed.), Part Object Part
Sculpture, Wexner Center for the Arts,
Columbus, 2005, p.29.
3. ‘I am concerned with exploring how scientific
findings change popular conceptions of what
it means to be human, and that can be quite
confrontational. For example, it’s interesting
how advances in neuroscience challenge our
understanding of identity. Through new scientific research into the evolutionary history of
the brain, we can understand the self not as a
fixed entity but as an ever-changing process.’
Pamela Rosenkranz in Aofie Rosenmeyer, ‘In
the Studio: Pamela Rosenkranz’, Art in America
(January 2015), p.79; online at www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazine/inthe-studio-pamela-rosenkranz.
Duane Hanson: Realness, not Realism
by Douglas Coupland
There are some creators who died
a bit too early, and who never lived
to see their work get the full attention it deserved. Van Gogh comes
to mind, as does Scott Fitzgerald,
as does Duane Hanson. Hanson
created hyperrealist figurative work
at a moment in art history when to
be sculpturally figurative was academically anathema. His work was
enormously popular with the public
and this also made him critically
suspect, a fact of which he was well
aware. To be underrated because
of transient political vogues left
Hanson without a full sense of
artistic community, and this feeling
of isolation is in evidence in his
work, particularly in the solo figures
created in the last two decades of
his life. Their loneliness is almost
achingly beautiful, and is reminiscent of a fellow American unique,
Edward Hopper.
I remember for the first time seeing
Hanson’s work – Tourists (1970) – in
my early twenties, and I remember
my realist wow moment – a moment
that most people also experience
upon encountering his work, and
I very much remember wondering
how does he do it? Technical prowess
is something I always appreciate
in artwork, but some people read
133
prowess as entertainment. I never
got that from his pieces. Hanson
created the realism that he did
because there was no other way for
him to convey the relationship he
saw between individuals and the
societies they inhabit. His realism
wasn’t Madame Tussauds, and it
wasn’t mannequins in the store
windows at Macy’s . . . so then what
was it? It was only later in life that
I realised Hanson was going for
realness, a term used by drag queens
in competitions when portraying
archetypes: rich white women
dressed for lunch; high-school football players getting their photos
taken for the yearbook. The word
‘archetype’ is important here because
Hanson was often dismissed as
someone who worked in stereotypes
– ontologically similar but wrong.
Archetypes depict universal modes
of being that reconfigure themselves
over and over again across time,
geography and cuture. Stereotypes
are exaggerated characteristics
temporarily tainted with conscious
or subconscious contempt. Right
now, the 1970s are almost half a
century away from us and we have
a bit of distance from that era.
Hanson’s largely middle- and lowermiddle-class figures do convey the
late twentieth-century nothingness
beneath the sheen of consumer
culture, but more importantly, as
the middle-class unravels, as it’s
doing now, we’re learning that the
shopping carts aren’t as full as they
once were. We’re learning that to
be a cartoon-like American tourist
abroad is probably a bad idea that
will most likely invite bad experiences.
We’re also realising that not far down
the road, many museum-goers will
share the same crappy jobs or no
work at all, just like Hanson’s drifters.
It’s always fascinating to watch the
general public interact with Hanson’s
work, and to see the inevitable wow
moment. It seems tailor-made for
our current era – in fact, could
there be any work out there more
selfie-friendly than Hanson’s?
Technology has inverted some of
the rules of the institutional artistic
experience. What was once forbidden in the museum (the photo) is
now encouraged. The eyeballs of
Hanson’s figures no longer look
out into space, but instead at the
viewer’s camera aperture along
with the viewer. What was once a
power-imbalanced relationship, the
institution and the viewer, instead
becomes intimate, curious, democratic and highly engaged. A new
museum archive category seems
to be emerging – a continuum of
‘selfieness’. At one end of the selfie
spectrum is, say, Donald Judd’s work.
It’s hard to imagine taking a selfie
with one of his wall pieces – although
his long-term installations in Marfa,
Texas, are now an off-grid tourist
destination for art fair aficionados,
and a surprising number of people
make the Spiral Jetty pilgrimage
to Robert Smithson’s land art in
remotest Utah, so you never know.
And at the other end of the selfie
continuum we have Hanson and,
say, Jeff Koons. Selfieness is no
indication of a work’s depth or
anything else except, well, its selfieness. But whatever selfieness is,
it’s possibly what institutions are
looking for to help them navigate
through the next twenty years. So
maybe it’s not so odd a category
after all.
But aside from the typical museumgoer, there are members of the art
world, both older and younger,
who arrive at Hanson’s work with
a different set of experience filters.
Younger people never saw Hanson’s
real-life human subjects back in
the day, and view Hanson’s work as
historical: Can you believe people
really dressed like that and did all
that crazy stuff ? And then there
134
are older art-world habitués who
probably remember the unspoken
ideological fatwa on Hanson and
who, maybe, if they’re honest,
helped perpetuate it; and now these
people are old and falling apart, and
there is Hanson’s work, eternal and
as fresh as ever. Hanson is now seen
as the grandfather of a large and
thriving genre of visual art dealing
with hyperreal figuration, and young
people find it impossible to believe
that someone whose work was so
intense and so true could ever have
been perceived as an outsider. Time
always tells.
Hanson’s work is now only viewed
in museums, and watching museumgoers interacting with his forms is
just as much a part of experiencing
his work as admiring it on its own.
It’s very different from seeing mannequins at the mall or dioramas in
anthropology museums. Hanson’s
pieces are right there, coequal with
you. In some ways they feel more
authentic than you: they come from
an era where authenticity was the
default mode of being, an era
when reality reigned, and where a
word like ‘realness’ was still only
something in an artist’s and a drag
queen’s magic bag of tricks.
135