Edit or Publish Saved Feature: Duane Hanson, Bowery Derelicts
It's a life-sized piece, crafted in polyester and fiberglass, and is polychromed. It's a haunting depiction of three homeless men lying and sitting half-prone amid strewn garbage; each has his own bottle of alcohol. It demands the viewer's attention.
Hanson was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1925, and only began working as a realist in 1960. Prior to that his work was largely "abstract and decorative."
"I did all kinds of things...I got to the point where I said...so what? They were pretty statements that didn't amount to much. It was all too concerned with aesthetics...there was no attempt to communicate any deep feeling..."
Hanson created his first figure in polyester resin and fiberglass, cast from a clay model, in 1967. He eventually decided to forgo modeling in clay and instead took a plastic impression directly from a live model.
He used his sculpture to express social commentary and force it on the viewer. His themes range from violence, to death and dying, to war, and those present in "Bowery Derelicts": alcoholism and social injustice.