Alfred Earl "Al" Hansen (5 October 1927 – 20 June 1995) was an American artist. He was a member of

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

, a movement that originated on an artists' collective around

George Maciunas George Maciunas (; lt, Jurgis Mačiūnas; November 8, 1931 – May 9, 1978) was a Lithuanian American artist, born in Kaunas. A founding member and the central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers ...

. He was the father of

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

protégé Bibbe Hansen and the grandfather and artistic mentor of rock musician

Beck Beck David Hansen (born Bek David Campbell; July 8, 1970) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s with his experimental and lo-fi style, and became known for creating musical colla ...

and artist Channing Hansen. Bibbe and Channing continue his legacy by performing some of his most iconic works.

Biography

Born in New York City, Al Hansen was a friend to

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

and

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...

. While serving in Germany in World War II, Hansen pushed a piano off the roof of a five-story building. This act became the foundation of one of his most recognized performance pieces, the ''Yoko Ono Piano Drop.'' Many artists have also destroyed or altered pianos including

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super h ...

and Raphael Montañez Ortiz. Amazone - Al Hansen - Kölnisches Stadtmuseum-5054

Hansen studied with composer

at the now famous 1958 Composition Class at the New School for Social Research in New York City along with fellow students, Dick Higgins,

George Brecht George Brecht (August 27, 1926 – December 5, 2008), born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer, as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson ...

, and

Allan Kaprow Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and " Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well ...

amongst others. Hansen was a frequent visitor to ''

The Factory The Factory was Andy Warhol's studio in New York City, which had four locations between 1963 and 1987. The Factory became famed for its parties in the 1960s. It was the hip hangout spot for artists, musicians, celebrities and Warhol's superstar ...

'',

's studio in New York. Hansen was perhaps best known for his performance pieces, his participation in Happenings, and for his

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an Assemblage (art), assemblage of different forms, thus creat ...

s in which he often used cigarette butts and candy bar wrappers as the raw materials, among them numerous variations of a sculpture referring to the

Venus of Willendorf The Venus of Willendorf is an Venus figurine estimated to have been made around 25,000-30,000 years ago. It was found on August 7, 1908, by a workman named Johann Veran or Josef Veram during excavations conducted by archaeologists Josef Szombat ...

. He wrote an important book about performance art, ''A Primer of Happenings and Time Space Art'' published by

Something Else Press Something Else Press was founded by Dick Higgins in 1963. It published many important Intermedia texts and artworks by such Fluxus artists as Higgins, Ray Johnson, Alison Knowles, Allan Kaprow, George Brecht, Daniel Spoerri, Robert Fillio ...

in 1965. In 1966 he attended the Destruction in Art Symposium in London organized by Gustav Metzger, where he met and befriended many of the Viennese Action Artists. In October 1966 Otto Muhl organized an event called "Action Concert for Al Hansen" in Vienna. He was an art professor at Rutgers College in Newark, New Jersey, into the 1970s. In 1977 Hansen managed Los Angeles punk bands the Controllers and

the Screamers The Screamers were an American electropunk group founded in 1975. They were among the first wave of the L.A. punk rock scene. The Los Angeles Times applied the label "techno-punk" to the band in 1978. In the documentary '' Punk: Attitude'' ( ...

in Hollywood. In the 1980s Hansen moved to Cologne, Germany, where he and colleague Lisa Cieslik established an art school, the ''Ultimate Akademie''. Inspired among others by the ''Final Academy'' of

Genesis P-Orridge Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson; 22 February 1950 – 14 March 2020) was a singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, visual artist, and occultist who rose to notoriety as the founder of the COUM Transmissions ar ...

it became a meeting point for local and international performers of the time-based arts. He died in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

, in 1995, with a number of friends celebrating a Fluxus funeral according to his plan.

Notable collections

Archivio Conz - Francesco Conz's Collection
*''Yes She He,'' c. 1962,

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desig ...

, Washington, D.C. *''Coco Was a Poco Loco about Cacao and Men,'' 1968,

MoMA Moma may refer to: People * Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist * Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician * Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher Places ; ...

New York, NY New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

*''John Cage Word Opera,'' 1972–1076,

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...

Minneapolis, MN Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with list of lakes in Minneapolis, thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. ...

*''Amazone Venus 3/9'' 1994,

Kölnisches Stadtmuseum The Kölnische Stadtmuseum is the municipal history museum of Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is housed in the building of the historic with the adjacent Prussian . Its collection includes around 350,000 objects from the Middle Ag ...

. *''Yayoi Kusama's Yokohama Hammock'' 1963, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien Vienna.mumo
Museum Moderner Kunst"
/ref>

References

* René Block, Gabriele Knapstein: 'A long story with many knots. Fluxus in Germany 1962–1994.' (''Eine lange Geschichte mit vielen Knoten. Fluxus in deutschland.'') Institute for foreign relations (''Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen''), Stuttgart, Germany, 1995

External links

Al Hansen websiteMaciunas on Fluxus and Hansen's part therein, George Maciunas's Seattle Interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hansen, Al 1927 births 1995 deaths Artists from New York City Fluxus American people of Norwegian descent People associated with The Factory