TCC Sculpture Blog: Duane Hanson

Duane Hanson was born in Alexandria, Minnesota (January 17, 1925), and studied at several institutions, as both undergraduate and postgraduate, 1943 – 51 . In 1953 he moved to Germany where he taught in Munich and later Bremerhaven and made sculptures in a variety of styles and media. He returned to America in 1960 , as Pop art was emerging, and, influenced by the full-size plaster-cast figures of George Segal , developed his own distinctive style. Like Segal , Hanson used life casts as the basis for his fibreglass and resin figures but also applied lifelike colour, dressed them in real clothing, and provided them with real accessories. He took his subjects, like Tourists ( 1970 ; Edinburgh, NG of Modern Art), from the lower middle classes, specializing in the banal and slightly depressing. Although they had no satiric intent they were designed as a commentary on the emptiness of lives dominated by consumerism. Hanson's figures are more realistic, like waxworks, than those of his contemporary Pop artists and he is more properly associated with the photo realists who emerged in the early 1970s