al hansen on show

al hansen (afred earl), fluxus artist, on show in milan, march 2003. hansen is the grandfather of music's superstar beck...............................................

......................... shop .................. competitions .............. education ................ interviews ................... snapshots ................... history .......... contemporary

al hansen : life is fluxus

february 6 - march 30, 2003
lattuada studio gallery, milan
http://www.lattuadastudio.it
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exhibition and catalogue curated by claudia zanfi
in collaboration with studio morra, naples.

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collages
being a great admirer of the works of kurt schwitters -
dada was the key to hansen's collages,
he made use of a wide range of materials:
cigarette butts, cardboard, rope, film, tin cans,
various leftovers from his performances...
hansen follows a single, relentless obsession:
the composition of various objects in search of
universal beauty in the form of the female body.

'at one time, when beck and channing must have
been eight and six years old, I gave each of us a
plastic shopping bag and we scoured sunset boulevard
from la brea west almost to fairfax and back again
east to yucca. the three shopping bags full of cigarette
were all the art materials I needed.
all I had to buy was glue.' al hansen

also very original is the use of hershey-bar chocolate
wrappers in 'ready-made' objects.
the scraps of foil serve as the vehicle used by the artist
to endlessly reproduce his ongoing obsession.
the word 'she', cut out from the centre of the word,
is repeated hundreds of times as it makes up the
characteristic female symbol.
al hansen's approach anticipated how words and images
were to be used in concrete poetry. images and words,
organised in line with a logic of space juxtaposed to the
normal text structure and the entailing fixed order in a
new exploratory dimension.

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happenings in your home...
george maciunas said in 1962 'let there be fluxus'.
and fluxus there was forever after.
a new art form was developed: the happening.

'from cage's class in the late fifties, george brecht and I did
<blues for marcel duchamp> a piece of undeterminate length
to be performed between 5th and 6th avenues on 12th street
where marcel duchamp lived. we went to put an ad in the
village voice then we went to marcel duchamp's door and I
put in 13 blue rubber bands into his mail box.
george brecht returned to new jersey and mailed marcel a
blueprint of a chocolate grinder. dick higgins and I did a
concert of new music at kaufman hall featuring works by him,
me, john cage's water music, chris wolf and dick maxfield.
happenings were beginning to happen.'

1965 hansen published advertisements in the
new yorker daily papers offering 'happenings' in your home'.

'the happening is a curious and unique form of theater in
that one puts its parts together in the manner of making
a collage. the things in a collage might be worked in initially
to fit with the things around them, but in the finished piece,
any or several of these items might be covered over with
black paint and have something imbedded in them.
the same process seems to apply to the happening'
said hansen in 1965.

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pop art
as a habitue of andy warhol's factory, he was both influenced
by and influenced the 1960's pop art movement.
hansen is also the man who in june, 1968 was walking into
andy's studio, and smelling gun power. upon entering the studio hansen
found warhol on the floor with two bullets in his stomach.
he lived.

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yoko ono piano drop
during his time with the army of occupation in frankfurt, germany,
he pushed a piano off the top of a 5 story bombed out building.
later, back in new york city and all over the world, he performed
this act many times.
he later titled it 'yoko ono piano drop' after his friend and
contemporary.

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avant-garde
'it is popular in germany and in italy to think of classical,
academic concerns as fascistic, at least conservative.
perhaps a lot of avant-garde work in europe owes its
energy to a need to unhook, divorce, seperate from allusionary
poetic realism. a fluxus position of constantly,
inexorably going the wrong way, of going always against
what the people on top dictate, against what the people
who buy, buy...
wrong materials used in the wrong way and often at the
wrong time, this is a simple definition of avant-garde.'
wrote al hansen in 1989

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antagonist to any accepted concerns
'I have a strong connection to work that is not that
sure of itself. not quite finished... myself, I always am
a bit unsure of a work that has great authority, that is
complete in every way...' al hansen, 1989

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'art always wins'
'life always has something in store for the artist,
something new, something yet to be done.' al hansen

'art as we know it is a fairly modern thing.
in prehistory it was involved with magic and early religions.
its original use is no longer known but I feel the magic in art
very heavily. just to do it, any kind of it, sets up warm vibrations...

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'curriculum vitae is not vital'
alfred earl hansen was born 1927 in queens,
new york city. he married audrey in 1948 and in 1951
their daughter bibbe anne was born.
his artistic education started in the fifties, after coming
home from the war, at the arts student league in nyc's
greenwich village, the cooper union art school and
the pratt institute, where he studied graphic art.

'always on the road, allways underway, an alchemist
turning shit into gold, raising base, ugly stuff to art works
to worship and enjoy.' he said about himself.

he has two grandsons, beck and channing hansen.
constant financial problems and a sort of 'hyper-kinetic anxiety'
forced the artist to move several times. new york, hollywood,
cologne, asolo (near verona), naples...

on june 21, 1995 in cologne / germany, al hansen died.

***
beck, who is critically acclaimed in the music industry,
has achieved pop superstardom over the past several years,
winning many awards and selling millions of albums.
the process beck uses to create music is influenced by his
grandfather's art and includes improvised recording sessions in
which songs are created on the spot.
beck's use of sampled sounds from existing sources to create
music that is. essentially, an audio collage is also very similar to his
grandfather's use of refuse and sound in his visual and performance art.
beck openly credits al with his approach to art and sound.

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more info
http://www.alhansen.net
http://www.bibbe.com
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa147.htm
http://www.geocities.com/murxielago/articlenewyork.html
http://www.fluxus.org
http://www.ultimate-akademie.com