Country Club Dance

Description

A culmination of Philip Hanson’s Dancing Couple series, and perhaps the inspiration for a 1969 painting bearing the same name, the etching Country Club Dance depicts seven pairs of well-dressed couples clinging to each other on a terrace. The scene is staged theatrically: curtainlike balloons and a low wall in the foreground, where the footlights might sit on a stage, frame the couples. Unnaturally large plants occupy the sides, their creeping, fingerlike tendrils reaching toward the couples. Despite the crowded dance floor, the faceless figures appear lonely and removed from their social surroundings.

Country Club Dance

Philip Hanson

December 1968

Accession Number

195866

Medium

Etching on ivory wove paper

Dimensions

Image/plate: 21.2 × 35 cm (8 3/8 × 13 13/16 in.); Sheet: 30.8 × 45.4 cm (12 3/16 × 17 7/8 in.)

Classification

etching

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Through prior bequest of Vera Berdich