No, no, I'm sure I don't get it. Of course I'm clueless, I can almost see smashing a guitar on stage as an act of defiance and crude energy but I fully miss the ...what, the point?, I miss why anyone would smash a piano to smithereens. A great big smashing bang and large chords of sound and then splinters. And no more piano. Piano murder? Vandalism as performance.... Are these untuned pianos? Please explain.
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["I remember being about five and my grandfather arriving at the house one day out of nowhere," Hansen's grandson Beck recalled. "He had a bag of junk with him, magazines, cigarette butts and refuse which he would use in his art pieces. I had some old toys out back, including a broken plastic rocking horse. The next day I came home from school and he had taken the horse, cut off the head and glued cigarette butts all over it, and then sprayed the whole thing silver. I think things of that nature showed me the possibilities that lie within everyday disposable objects, that we can act as alchemists and turn shit into gold."]
Hansen, Al (?- ) American artist, grandfather of Beck Hansen [noted for his role in the Fluxus art movement]
[Sources: Irish Times, 19 November 1999]
More Al Hansen anecdotes
Related Anecdote Keywords: Eccentrics Eccentricity Performance Art Pianos Vandalism Spontaneity
