Facts on Sculptor Duane Hanson for Kids

Duane's Pop People Shop

• As a boy in rural Minnesota, Duane Hanson used whatever he could find to carve sculptures. He was born in 1925 and completed his graduate art studies just after the midpoint of the twentieth century, eventually settling in south Florida. Hanson, according to exhibit-related materials prepared by the Michener Art Museum, was drawn to realism in an art milieu obsessed with abstract expressionism. The pop artists of the 1960s, like Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, encouraged him to embark on his own uniquely realistic depictions of the world around him. Hanson used polyester resin and fiberglass to cast life-size models of people that he then painted so convincingly that they almost seemed to breathe. He dressed his people in real clothes and arranged them in genuine settings with props and furniture such as chairs, tables, cameras and sunglasses. Hanson's people are so lifelike that they could startle an unwary small child -- or a grown-up.

Queenie II and Friends

• Hanson's sculptures capture the lives of ordinary people -- not models, not pretty, not privileged -- going about their ordinary lives. Because Hanson's people are not real, museumgoers can observe them closely without being rude, according to a designboom.com catalog covering a 2002-03 retrospective of his work. And, because they are so realistic, Hanson conveys universal truths about their lives. Queenie II is one example. She is a tired, overweight cleaning woman in a nondescript turquoise uniform and grubby sneakers, pushing a wheeled trashcan fitted with plastic sleeves for industrial cleaning supplies: a toilet brush, spray bottles, paper towels, sponges. She looks bored and resigned -- the truth of her hard life is inescapable. Child with Puzzle sits on a small Persian rug spread with a daunting array of puzzle pieces as a puppy naps next to her in a wicker basket. Museum Guard, standing in a gallery entrance, is a convincing magnet for lost visitors asking directions.

Tackling Tough Issues

• A smaller, early sculpture of a dead woman under a sheet, titled Abortion, created a stir as Hanson fused his politics with his art, according to Ruth Anderson, assistant curator of education at the Michener Art Museum. Later pieces created deliberate contrasts to underscore more subtle points. A Chinese student is depicted slumped, exhausted, on the ground, holding a protest sign. An American student -- Hanson's son was the model -- stands confident, clutching a textbook. The sculptures display unfailing empathy but their realism exposes uncomfortable issues: racism, poverty, oppression, misogyny, bleak old age. By allowing viewers to observe closely a public moment in a private life, Hanson makes his unmistakable statement. "It doesn't have to be pretty. It has to be meaningful," he told the "Fort Lauderdale News Sun Sentinel." The meaning is drawn from the context -- what the overweight Supermarket Lady has in her overflowing cart -- and from the observer, who brings her own experience to confront the art.

Material Hazards

• Viewing Hanson's work can be a memorable family experience. Investigating his method, his unconditional commitment and his meaning can lead children to a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be an artist. Hanson sacrificed his own body to create the enduring, lifelike figures he left behind. His method was to search for body types among family, friends, his college students and ordinary people. Once he determined a pose, he covered the figure in silicone rubber which formed the mold for casting various body parts in resin reinforced with fiberglass or polyvinyl, the material used as autobody filler. He soldered, painted, filled in, poked hair into scalps, and polished fingernails to achieve the imperfection of actual human skin, hair and bodies. And he paid for his astonishing illusions with his life. The Michener Art Museum points out that the carcinogenic materials Hanson worked with gave him cancer -- he lived with the disease for 25 years until his death at 70 in 1996.