The Spring 1999 Issue is now available To Order:

THE ART OF JUDGEMENT Policeman Sculpture by Duane Hanson

Steven May,
Independent Scholar, Writer, and Lecturer on Art and Culture:

My first thought on looking at Policeman was that this might be the officer a museum guard is once said to have called for help when one of Duanne Hanson's sculptures of a seated woman failed to respond to his attempts to get her attention.  Examining the work as an art historian, I see reflections of Hanson's admiration for George Segal's ghostly plastic figures, as well as his affinity for nineteenth-century American trompe Poeil  paintings and Edward Hopper's realism.

This "Everyman" law enforcement officer is a stand-up guy created by a sculptor rebelling against what the establishment said were fit subjects, which of course is what gave-and gives-may not appeal to everyone, but I think he made an interesting contribution to late twentieth-century sculpture.