ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 10, 1996 TAG: 9601100141
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BOCA RATON, FLA.
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: Associated Press
Duane Hanson, whose astonishingly realistic sculptures of garish tourists and blowsy supermarket shoppers celebrated common people and fooled passers-by, has died. He was 70.
Hanson died Saturday of non-Hodgkins lymphoma at Boca Raton Community Hospital. He had been in frail health for years from extended exposure to the polyester resins and fixatives he used in his sculpture.
His work, rooted in the Pop Art movement of the '60s, featured life-size images of men and woman in natural poses, wearing real clothes. They were often the sort of gaudily dressed, overweight people you'd see at a discount store or tourist trap.
Hanson said his work - with titles like ``Supermarket Shopper,'' ``Woman With Laundry Basket'' and ``Drug Addict'' - was more than an imitation of real-life characters.
``You have to doctor it up,'' he said. ``That's where the artistry comes in.''
He explained in 1970: ``Realism is best suited to convey the frightening idiosyncrasies of our time. The purpose of my work, like the flashing road signal, is to depict some of the latent and implicit terrors of our social environment.''
In 1991, one Hanson sculpture fooled a Fort Lauderdale museum guard into calling firefighters to revive an unresponsive woman he found sitting in the museum window.
``You can see the veins in her hands and legs,'' said a police lieutenant who finally realized they were looking at a sculpture.
Hanson ``was one of the most popular artists working in America, in part because his art embraced `everyman' as a subject,'' said Christina Orr-Cahall, director of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, which is exhibiting some of his work.
Sympathetic critics found either satire or underlying humanity in the figures. Others said they were just dull.
``The only problem is that the sculptures must eventually speak for themselves. And they haven't much to say on their own, it turns out,'' The New York Times said in 1994.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP/file. Duane Hanson stands behind his work in thisby CNB1990 file photo. His lifelike statues delighted critics and admirers
around the world.