Encountering Mimetic Realism: Sculptures by Duane Hanson, Robert Gober, and Ron Mueck.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the mimetic realist production of three artists—Duane Hanson (1925–1996), Robert Gober (b. 1954), and Ron Mueck (b. 1958)—whose sculptures exemplify changing attitudes toward figural realism over the past fifty years. This is an historically grounded study that is also informed by a theoretical awareness of the oscillation between representation and actuality, which is central to the viewer’s experience of mimetic realism. The primary objectives of this study are to dissect the technologies of making, the conceptual practices of display and reception, and the moments of encounter that characterize these projects. Sculptures by Hanson, Gober, and Mueck are handmade. These artists deploy traditional techniques of modeling, casting, and painting to recreate with mimetic accuracy human figures, body parts, and objects that stand-in for bodies. They explore unorthodox materials for sculpture, including wax and plastics, and draw upon methods used in the production of waxworks, special-effects models, and prosthetic limbs in order to simulate the complex look and texture of human flesh. Each artist represents a notably different approach to achieving vividly real figurations. Hanson and Mueck employ extreme verisimilitude, which renders an eerily convincing visual illusion of fine corporeal details: blemishes, wrinkles, fingernails, and follicles that sprout hairs. Gober, on the other hand, never reproduces whole human figures. Instead he remakes everyday objects—light bulbs, sinks, urinals, and drains—that are used by the body during daily rituals such as sleeping, eating, cleaning, and excreting. His project serves to highlight the multidimensionality of mimetic realism that moves beyond the actual representation of a person to mimicking the very palpable presence of another human being. All three sculptors choreograph the meeting between their works and viewers. They borrow strategies for display from places where artificial bodies are exhibited and viewed, such as funeral parlors, natural history and wax museums, cabinets of curiosity, and anatomical collections. This attention to encounter and display foreshadows and echoes changes in the modern art world, from a time of opposition to “the popular” toward the current marketing of exhibitions as public spectacle.