False Image Postcard

Phil Hanson exhibited alongside fellow students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago—Roger Brown, Eleanor Dube, and Christina Ramberg—in the False Image exhibitions between 1968 and 1969, which took place in the spirit of the Hairy Who exhibitions (1966‒1969), similarly at the Hyde Part Art Center in the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago. This is one of eight postcards based on original drawings made as designs for postcards for their first group exhibition in 1968. (Hanson designed two: see Smart Museum 2001.578e.) Hanson’s cartoonish motif of a dancing couple references the Pop Art style of Roy Lichtenstein (1923‒1997) in its simulation of the Ben-Day dots used in commercial printing. Hanson uses them here to create a flat surface pattern.

The theme of the dancing couple ties this image to others he produced in 1968: a series of individual dancing couples in small intaglio editions (approximately six prints each), including a more ambitious print Country Club Dance completed in December. (See 2001.635.) The theme is also recurrent in the work of Suellen Rocca, participant in the Hairy Who exhibitions and another emerging Chicago Imagist artist.