Portraying the feeling of being unsafe in art by Svend Wiig Hansen and Dan Sterup Hansen

Beskrivelse

“Think about how precariously we live, we are in danger - it just takes some crazy idiot to push the button, and then it will all blow up.”1 In 1956, 1958 and 1959 a group of Danish artists exhibited their art under the title “Man.” They wanted to address the status of the human being in its cultural context. Form and content met in images of human beings, many in internal and external peril from nuclear threats, dawning cold war anxiety and the humanistic hangover from the atrocities of the Second World War.

Among these exhibiting artists were Svend Wiig Hansen and Dan Sterup Hansen. The human beings they rendered in their art carried connotations of both hope and safety as well as connotations of threat. I will discuss how the body became a site of anxiety as well as a site of hope in works by these two artists and how this material and emotional site intersected with political history and the political views of the artists. Whereas feeling unsafe was the effect of the art on the viewers; the viewers were in response charged with the job of creating a safe society.

Periode	22 jan. 2021
Begivenhedstitel	Cultural Perceptions of Safety
Begivenhedstype	Konference
Placering	Heerleen, HollandVis på kort
Grad af anerkendelse	International