Duane Hanson
1925–1996
Duane Hanson began casting from live models in 1967 and for several years created expressionist tableaux addressing politically charged subjects such as the race riots of 1968 and the Vietnam War. By the early 1970s he increasingly focused on the individual figure, refining his lifelike sculptures by hand-painting their skin and clothing them with carefully selected garments and props. Depicting archetypes from everyday American life, the hyperreal sculptures are easily mistaken for live people. Hanson is often associated with the Photorealist movement that emerged during this period, but unlike these painters, who meticulously copied photographs, Hanson blended different models, gestures, and expressions for emotional impact. His characters are chosen to highlight the daily lives of lower- and middle-class Americans—construction workers, museum guards, old women, and policemen in forlorn poses. Like Edward Hopper’s subjects, they articulate the loneliness and resignation of the individual in modern society.
Representative of Hanson’s mature work, Woman with Dog portrays an aging, overweight, bespectacled woman on a chair, her dog curled up asleep on a rug beside her. The woman was cast from life and constructed of fiberglass- reinforced resin, meticulously painted. The dog, molded by hand, is adorned with actual canine hair. Hanson’s detailed focus adds to the despondency of the scene. “I’m not duplicating life, I’m making a statement about human values,” he has explained. “My work deals with people who lead lives of quiet desperation. I show the empty-headedness, the fatigue, the aging, the frustration.”
Introduction
Duane Hanson (January 17, 1925 – January 6, 1996) was an American artist and sculptor born in Minnesota. He spent most of his career in South Florida. He was known for his life-sized realistic sculptures of people. He cast the works based on human models in various materials, including polyester resin, fiberglass, Bondo, and bronze. His sculptures often provided political-social commentary and satire.
Hanson's works are in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Smithsonian.
Wikidata identifier
Q706462
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 15, 2025.
Introduction
Hanson is known for his detailed soft-sculptures featuring life-size depictions of normal American men and women in typically mundane situations: shopping, sitting on public benches, or resting. His work is considered Pop Art.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, installation artist, painter, sculptor
ULAN identifier
500007844
Names
Duane Hanson
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 15, 2025.
