There are Countless Rooms

This 1971 canvas by the Chicago Imagist artist Phil Hanson is a central painting from a large body of work. All of these paintings are devoted to enigmatic interiors of untenanted palaces and filled with a level of emotion that is apprehensive, fearful, and charged with erotic desire and dread of the unknown. There are Countless Rooms deals with the complexity of inner vision imaged as a series of mysterious rooms framing a large hall or inner court. Urns and pillars imply a kind of memorialization of such events: some seem reflective of the past while in other cases the anticipation of the future is suggested. Hanson’s glowing colors intensify this interpenetrating reflection on time and creation.

Hanson was an original member of the so-called False Image group of Chicago Imagist artists, and he participated in both of their historic group exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center staged in 1968 and 1969. Hanson is also a University of Chicago alumnus in the College’s general studies program. This major early work was included in the inaugural exhibition of the Fine Arts Department of the Chicago Cultural Center, Masterpieces of Recent Chicago Art, in 1977.