Duncan Hannah

american painting 

text by GLENN O’BRIEN/ ARTFORUM SUMMER 1984
all images copyright and courtesy of Duncan Hannah, 2017

 

THE BRITISH INVASION, 2016, OIL ON CANVAS

The return of figurative picture-painting has created something like a physics problem — for everything beautiful, there is an equal and opposite ugliness.
Duncan Hannah finds himself in the very modern predicament of painting pictures that seem infuriatingly attractive. He has been called “the Barry Manilow of the New Wave” and the prophet of “the Age of Valium.” For some, the only calm is sedation, but this is not the case with Hannah. His natural serenity is strong enough to egg on a critics’ frenzy, which cries out for angst relief. No doubt there is a vocal and influential, if not large, group that needs loud, bent paintings to make reality seem safe by comparison. For them, beautiful paintings…