Photos By Gail

Dwayne Hansen’s 1974 sculpture of a Drug Addict  slumped on the ground with a heroin needle in hand is rooted in the artist’s commitment to raise social consciousness by exposing the country’s harsh realities. In 1969, Hanson declared, “it is time for the artist to be ugly, obvious, and shock the people.”

He continued, criticizing the dominance of abstract painting and abstruse conceptual art, “there is a tragic cloud overhead, and most artists are still concerned with technique and purist intellectualism.”

Other works by the artist depict a woman covered by a sheet on a gurney (Abortion, 1965), the bloody bodies of American G.I.s in Vietnam (War, 1969), and white police officers beating black protesters (Race Riot, 1968). Hansen’s sculptures were frequently exhibited alongside the foremost photorealist painters of the period, evidence that photorealism was socially engaged from its beginnings.

Photographed in the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles