American Way Of Life By Duane Hanson

Duane Hanson (1925-1996) American artist and sculptor. Belongs to the American Pop Art and Hyperrealist movement. His sculptures are balanced between two extremes, Pop Art and post-modernism. "My work deals with people who live in silent despair. I show the helplessness, the weariness, the aging and the frustration" he liked to say. Hanson transposes scenes from everyday life, banal or provocative, to the museum in order to immortalize them and to force a dialogue between sculptures and spectators. One of his major works shows a white policeman beating up an African American after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Made from plastic materials, his works are a critical reflection of society where mediocrity, violence and also ridicule most often prevail. During the 1970s Hanson shifted his focus away from political themes in favor of depiction of everyday life in the United States. In this regard, he reveals a great empathy towards his figures. "Supermarket Lady" from 1969 shows the other side of the American dream. This housewife in a curler is a way for Hanson to denounce the hyper-consumer society which sends back an unflattering image of mankind highlighting the vain quest for happiness through the overconsumption characteristic of the American way of life, which wants it to need to consume in order to exist, to consume in order to stand out socially. By associating this woman so particular to American footballers, almost her masculine and virile counterpart ("American Football Vignette"), he thus targets the entire American middle class, men and women, in his criticism of society. As if Hanson was more interested in reporting on a category of people than on a particular individual. This lenticular image of the 70s is extremely rare by the association of its symbols and the process chosen by the Artist to communicate about himself. Lenticular imaging is a process for producing images that give an impression of relief (3D) or that change with the angle (Flip). Usually visible in the form of two different sculptures, this mural bringing them together had been produced for the promotion of the Artist in a famous Parisian Gallery on the Left Bank. Almost 30 years after his death, it seems that our issues have not changed. The topicality of Duane Hanson's work is strikingly modern. Note some scratches on the representation of the floor in the image at the bottom right. Work alone: 24 cm wide by 26 cm high Recent contemporary framing.