Duncan Hannah Imagined Journeys January 21–February 27, 2021 MODERNISM Inc. | San Francisco
Pigalle, 2020, oil on canvas, 18 x 18 inches Cover: Ghost in Shepherd’s Market, 1931, 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 18 inches
Duncan Hannah Imagined Journeys
January 21–February 27, 2021
MODERNISM Inc. | 724 Ellis Street | San Francisco, CA 94109
L’Europeo (Catherine Spaak), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Imagined Journeys By Robert Flynn Johnson
You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil. —Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, (published posthumously in 1964)
The horrific Coronavirus pandemic that enveloped the world in 2020 has had a devastating effect on our health, economy, and sense of community as humans by the necessary enforcement of social distancing among all but the reckless. This necessary isolation has taken a profound emotional toll on the psyche of many causing depression, anxiety, and a loss of purpose in life. For many artists, however, this unexpected isolation has become something of a creative godsend. The absence of daily human interactions with its necessary time consumption and distractions has miraculously freed up space to write, paint, draw, sculpt, compose, and choreograph. So it has been for Duncan Hannah. The majority of the works in this exhibition are the fruits of his creative isolation over the past nine months. Hannah has commented: I retreated to my Cornwall, Connecticut studio on March 13th. There was none of the distraction I usually deal with in my Brooklyn life, so I was able to build a momentum like never before and indulge myself in my filmic fantasies on small canvases. I began to put my movie star crushes on the covers of magazines that I collect. I was inspired not only by foreign cinema, but by 60s English Pop artists Peter Blake and Pauline Boty, who I’d long admired.
Cine Revue (Catherine Spaak), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches right: Stern (Femi Benussi), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
In a world where success is often recognized by publicity or notoriety, it is refreshing and invigorating to discuss the art of Duncan Hannah. Mr. Hannah is supremely immune to unbecoming jockeying for attention, content to allow his paintings to speak for themselves. As the artist Peter Milton once said when asked for an artist’s statement, “I’d be a poor father indeed if I had to speak for my children.” Hannah possesses hard-earned skill and encyclopedic knowledge, transferring his intelligence, passion, curiosity, and even occasional whimsy onto the canvas in the way he desires. Rather than being shunned for his stubborn independence, Hannah has developed a select and passionate following. Like some auteur filmmaker, Hannah has developed an audience that “gets it,” and eagerly collect his artistic output.
Frivol (Dominique Sanda), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches right: Jours de France (Catherine Spaak), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
To properly understand the art of Duncan Hannah, it is important to know his background. A Midwesterner from Minnesota, he always aspired to be an artist, and realized early on that only in New York City was that goal truly to be fulfilled. There, like many, he had a few false steps, for him, a brief foray into abstraction. Later, some sideways experiences as a member of the Warhol crowd, a short career as an underground film actor, and several years as a successful illustrator. It was only in the early 1970s, however, that Hannah at last realized that his fate was to follow his passion, despite the lack of approbation by the art world. It was to paint in the representational tradition of his heroes like Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, and Edwin Dickinson. Duncan Hannah is a true artistic expatriate despite living in Brooklyn and Connecticut. Memories of his time living in Europe and his absorption of the manners and traditions of England and the
The Time Machine, 2008, oil on canvas, 14 x 9 inches right: Youth Rides Out, 2016, oil on canvas, 14 x 9 inches
Continent are ever present in his paintings. Hannah is not content to simply record aspects of the present, but also allows his imagination to dwell in the post-war 1950s and the swinging 60s. It is not necessary to be “au courant” to the cultural and factual references in his art to appreciate them; however, it adds to one’s understanding and enjoyment if you are. Hannah is understandably famous for his deadpan series of English paperback book covers. His keen eye for detail had always admired the torrent of famous literature produced in these inexpensive editions in post-war Britain. There is a Samuel Beckett like repetition in the dour design and lettering enlivened only by the incongruous appearance of a penguin. What is not generally known, however, is that some of the books and their covers never existed in the manner depicted. They are Hannah’s sly invention.
Boy in a Courtyard, 2020, oil on canvas, 18 x 14 inches right: Monaco 1957, 2019, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
Hannah’s paintings take us on a travelogue of Europe with side trips into avant-garde cinema. A boy, his haircut and clothes, his soccer ball and the courtyard in Hannah’s painting fairly shouts Italy, Milan in this case. A 1950s vintage Formula One race car speeds along a quai indicating it is the Monaco Grand Prix. Street scenes with women are unmistakably French, one in fact referencing the 1956 film, Bob le Flambeur. A young British woman in a courtyard is wearing green tights recalling a similar pair worn by Jane Birkin in the 1966 film, Blow Up. Hannah’s paintings begin with memories and end with his intriguing translation of them onto canvas.
New Cinema (Sylvia Sydney), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches right: Swinging London, 2020, oil on canvas, 18 x 18 inches
The largest and most ambitious series of paintings Hannah produced during the pandemic was a series of minor movie starlets of the 1950s and 60s. Now mostly forgotten or dead, he has made them come alive in their radiant youth on the covers of Italian and French fan magazines of his own invention and design. This voluminous array of femme fatales and vixens includes Teresa Ann Savoy, Sylvia Kristel, Ingrid Steeger, Sylva Koscina, Elsa Martinelli, Dominique Sanda, Catherine Spaak, Marie de Regnier, Sylvia Sidney, Femi Benussi, Jacqueline Bisset and Jean Seberg. Hannah has a vivid memory of these women that coincided with his coming of age. To add one more insight into Hannah’s reverence for the past, there is a single painting of a man, Stu Sutcliffe, the doomed member of The Beatles who died before the group reached fame. Here he appears incongruously on a beach looking more like Alain Delon than a Liverpool lad.
Cine Revue (Teresa Ann Savoy), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches right: Neue Revue (Ingrid Steeger), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Ernest Hemingway wrote, “There is never any ending to Paris, and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other … Paris was always worth it, and you received return for whatever you brought to it.” Duncan Hannah, in his art, has learned that lesson well. In his small, intimate paintings, he returns the favor of his experiences by inviting us into his memory bank culled from a cultivated life. He is unabashed in his love of recreating elements of the past in paint. Robert Flynn Johnson Curator Emeritus Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Today - My Sweet Life (Catherine Spaak), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Novela Film (Stu Sutcliffe), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Cinema Nuovo, 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Espionnage (Sylvia Kristel), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
BeautĂŠ (Liv Lisa Fries), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Paris Flash (Jacqueline Bisset), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Alps, 2020, oil on can
nvas, 18 x 24 inches
The She-Devils, 2014, oil on canvas, 14 x 9 inches
Myrna Loy, 2020, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches
Afternoon Men, 2009, oil on canvas, 14 x 9 inches
Spaak in a Towel, 2020, oil on board, 14 x 11 inches
Stop-Time, 2014, oil on canvas, 14 x 9 inches
Montague Terrace 2020, oil on canvas, 10 x 8 inches
The Pursuit of Love, 2016, oil on canvas, 14 x 9 inches
Jean Seberg, 2019, oil on canvas, 10 x 8 inches
Brave New World, 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 9 inches
Between Past and Future, 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 9 inches
Sylva (Sylva Koscina), 2017, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Elsa Reading (Elsa Martinelli), 2020, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
Marie (Marie de Regnier), 2020, oil on canvas, 10 x 8 inches
Rainy Day in June, 2020, oil on canvas, 18 x 14 inches
Ghost in Shepherd’s Market, 1931, 2
2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 18 inches
Girl from Annecy, 2020, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches
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