Country Club Dance

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.