Philip Hanson
American, born 1943
Veiled Head I
INV-1958
Philip Hanson
American, born 19431967
Veiled Head I
Philip Hanson American, born 1943 →etchingpaper
Date
1967
Medium
Etching, with hand-coloring in watercolor, on cream wove paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 10.8 × 7.5 cm (4 5/16 × 3 in.); Sheet: 14.1 × 10.7 cm (5 9/16 × 4 1/4 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Through prior bequest of Vera Berdich
This small, sinister series of veiled heads reveals the influence of Philip Hanson’s fellow student and future spouse, Christina Ramberg, who is known for her studies of anonymous women with veiled or bound heads and hands. Hanson’s haunting faces are covered with rigid veils. The figures’ mouths, with feral, bared teeth, float impossibly in front of the veils, while fantastical nurse’s caps with adobe-style parapets, similar to the architectural facades in Pavilion Park, sit atop them. As the series progresses, the faces are obscured, leaving the hovering, ghostly visage of the veil as a dramatic afterimage.
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