The American artist Duane Hanson critizes the consumption society through his work, and his sculpture The Supermarket Lady clearly visualizes Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality.
Duane Hanson, Supermarket Lady, 1969
The Human Being as Subject Matter
Duane Hanson was an American artist (1925-1996), who sculpted lifesize realistic works of workingclass citizens, cast in various materials, including polyester resin, fiberglass, and bronze. He said in an interview in 1981 that he was “mostly interested in the human form as subject matter and means of expression for my sculpture. What can generate more interest, fascination, beauty, ugliness, joy, shock or contempt than a human being?”
Hanson realistically visualized the tragic of people trapped in ‘the American way of life’. He transformed unremarkable people going about their daily life business into works of art. The sculptor gave these overlooked, generalised people a singular identity, highlighting their activities and societal roles, showing every tired frown, every ugly wrinkle. Because his sculptures are so realistic, the division between reality and illusion, and real art and an artificial world, becomes obliterated. The sculptures have become lifesize threedimensional snapshots of the American daily life, sometimes hard to distinguish from the spectators themselves (Kunstbus).
Duane Hanson, Drug Addict, 1974
Hyperreality Portrayed
Hanson’s sculptures are critical of the American consumption society. His Supermarket Lady of 1969, is a sculpture of a fat middleclass woman in a supermarket. She is the symbol of the consumption society, symbolized by her overflowing shopping cart with products. Consumption is not, according to Jean Baudrillard, the French social theorist, “something individuals do and through which they find enjoyment, satisfaction and fulfilment. Rather, consumption is a collective phenomenon, a coded system of signs that is external to and coercive over individuals [...] The use of that system via consumption is an important way in which people communicate with one another.” (Ritzer, 1998, p. 15).
Hanson’s work can be considered hyperreal, which is described by Baudrillard as “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality” (Porter, 1993, p. xi). The hyperreality is composed of simulacra, which are not copies of the real, but a truth by themselves. This is the reason why the sculpture of the Supermarket Lady provokes the spectator to think about the obliteration of the division between illusion and reality, and question whether, in Baudrillard’s words, we “modern human beings now inhabit an artificial, hermetically sealed pleasure dome, where nothing is constant, where everything reflects everything else in a theatre of dazzling simulations dominated by the proliferation of the sign” (Porter, 1993, p. 2).
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Baudrillard, J.
(1998). The Consumer Society. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
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Rojek, C. & B.S. Turner
(1993). Forget Baudrillard? London: Routledge.
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Porter, R.
(1993). “Baudrillard: history, hysteria and consumption”. In C. Rojek & B.S. Turner, Forget Baudrillard? London: Routledge.
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Ritzer, G..
(1998). “Introduction”, in J. Baudrillard, The Consumer Society. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
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http://www.kunstbus.nl/verklaringen/duane+hanson.html
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www.wikipedia.com