Al Hansen

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Al Hansen, 1994 in San Francisco

Alfred Earl "Al" Hansen (born October 5, 1927 in New York City , † June 22, 1995 in Cologne ) was an American artist of Norwegian descent. He is considered to be one of the main American protagonists of Fluxus art.

life and work

Hansen served as a young soldier in Germany in Frankfurt am Main in 1945 and in Berlin in 1948. In 1949 he studied at the Art Students League in New York City, in 1950 at Brooklyn College and in 1956 at the New School For Social Research - Experimental Music with John Cage .

From 1967 he taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey, 1970 at the Parsons School of Design and 1979 at the Eskimo Art School Nuuk-G. in Greenland .

Amazone 3/9 in front of the Cologne City Museum

One of Hansen's first legendary action was to throw a piano out of a bombed-out five-story house as an occupying soldier in Frankfurt. This later became a well-known performance , named after his girlfriend at the time, Yoko Ono Yoko One Piano Drop , which is considered the conceptual forerunner of other instrument destruction, as with Nam June Paik and later u. a. Jimi Hendrix .

In New York Hansen was active in Andy Warhol's Factory and worked a. a. with John Cage . For the American part of the Fluxus movement, he was considered one of the defining figures with his performance pieces and happenings . In 1965 he published "A Primer of Happenings and Time Space Art" ( Something Else Press ), one of the standard works on this movement. He also worked as a visual artist, where he liked to use scrap pieces, for example in hundreds of variations of the cigarette Venus , a replica of the prehistoric Venus of Willendorf glued together from cigarette stubs .

In 1983 Al Hansen went to Cologne and had a number of exhibitions. In 1987 he founded, inspired a. a. from the Final Academy of the British pop and performance artist Genesis P-Orridge , with the performance artist Lisa Cieslik in Cologne the Ultimate Academy . As a free training institution for performance art, it became the contact point for a number of Rhenish and international artists of the "time based arts". During this time Hansen was also the mentor of his grandson, the later pop musician "Beck" Hansen .

After Al Hansen's death in 1995, a Fluxus funeral was organized in Cologne at his request, with the participation of artist friends and his daughter Bibbe Hansen .

literature

Web links

Commons : Al Hansen  - collection of images, videos and audio files