After the Tourists were acquired in 1979 they quickly became a popular feature in the Gallery of Modern Art’s collection. Although their Florida-style clothing may be incongruous in the Edinburgh climate, this ordinary, middle-aged couple have engendered many double takes as visitors respond to the illusion of reality that the artist has crafted with meticulous attention to detail. The figures were cast from life, but for all their verisimilitude, Hanson still wanted them to be regarded as sculptures and his artistic mission went beyond mere imitation and caricature.
Hanson was born in rural Minnesota in the American Midwest. His childhood interest in carving and sculpture was nurtured in formal art training at a variety of colleges across the United States and continued during a period of teaching in Germany and also back in America. In his early work he experimented with various forms of abstract sculpture, but in the 1960s he began to make socially motivated figure pieces with emotive subjects inspired, for example, by race riots and violence on the streets. He was already modelling his sculptures in polyester resin and fibreglass, but in 1967 began to cast his figures from life. He used elaborate moulding processes, painting the figures and adding real accessories to achieve the most realistic effects. His subject matter was often deliberately confrontational, with his sculptures of suicides, rape and murder victims often provoking considerable controversy.
By 1970 Hanson had switched from subjects intended to shock to those documenting ordinary lower- and middle-class American types including an array of blue-collar tradesmen, overweight shoppers, sunbathers and office workers.
Encouraged by Pop Art which took its subject matter from everyday life, and influenced by the work of George Segal and Edward Kienholz who placed figures in elaborately staged settings, Hanson chose his models to suggest what he described as ‘the resignation, emptiness, and loneliness of their existence’. Whereas pop artists elevated and glamourised the ordinary, Hanson highlighted monotony and soullessness; collectively his work presents a sharp critique of a materialistic society and the legions of people who, in Hanson’s words, ‘lead lives of quiet desperation’.
Tourists dates from 1970 and remains one of Hanson’s best-known works. As the couple stare at some unknown sight, we in turn become voyeurs and it is impossible not to be drawn in to examine intimate details such as the woman’s vaccination marks or the wrinkled leathery skin of the man’s face. The figures are dressed in typical holiday clothes with all the required trappings, including camera and tripod and a handbag bulging with tourist souvenirs, such as a brochure for a Florida theme park and museum tickets. The gently mocking tone here is perhaps exaggerated in our European setting as the image plays to a clichéd view of Middle America at leisure. But Hanson’s aim is humanist and sympathetic; in emphasising the vacuous and the banal and in drawing our attention to ordinary types, he repeatedly said that he was not duplicating life but ‘making a statement about human values’.
This text was originally published in 100 Masterpieces: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2015.
