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| Al Hansen, Sweet Cell Dada, 1964. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, gift of Michael Asher and Pamela Allen |
For Don Draper, the Hershey bar was "one of the most successful billboards of all time." The very real chocolate tycoon Milton Hershey would have agreed. He was in the habit of picking up discarded chocolate wrappers, only to replace them on the ground, with the Hershey name face up.
For Fluxus provocateur Al Hansen, the Hershey wrapper was raw material for art. By 1962 he had noticed that the word HERSHEY contains the feminine pronouns HER and SHE. Hansen began making text collages of Hershey bar wrappers. They were concrete poetry embodying a Pop critique of consumer-capitalism and the Fluxus ethos of art-from-trash. Created sporadically until the end of Hansen's life (1927–1995), the collages became a running commentary on the male gaze from the sexual revolution to third-wave feminism.
Conceptualist Michael Asher and Pamela Allen gave Hansen's Sweet Cell Dada to MOCA in 1997. It's now on view in "Gifts of Michael Asher" at MOCA Grand Avenue, through Aug. 2, 2026.
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| Al Hansen, Calliope Venus, 1962. Private collection |
Calliope Venus is one of Hansen's first Hershey collages. The silver text, all complete words, is enclosed within a sexualized female silhouette in shades of chocolate. Though the Hershey bar sets the scale for yjr text in Hanson's collages,
Calliope Venus is relatively large at 27 × 24-1/2 in.
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| Al Hansen, Apotheosis of Hershey Wrapper—Three Thugs Attached Him in the Men's Room of 'Il Mio', 1964. The Menil Collection, Houston |
By 1964, Hansen had evolved a small, all-text format evoking spoken word performances. Syllables are torn and set akilter, swarming into word clouds of frenetic imperatives.
Though Hansen was known for Fluxus happenings, it is the small, tangible Hershey collages that have perpetuated his reputation ("brand"). As
Ken Johnson wrote, Hansen "was an urbane descendant of Kurt Schwitters" whose work "could be mistaken for the art of an ingenious, slightly crazy street person."
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| Al Hansen, She Said, "You'll Have to Decide Between Me", 1966. Auctioned at Christie's New York, May 11, 2016 |
Comments
> Calliope Venus is relatively large at
> 27 × 24-1/2 in.
Large relatively speaking. But not when compared with large canvases common in contemporary art museums-galleries, or the large murals-tapestries in a Louvre or Met.
I think poster-sized or magazine-cover dimensions will be common for many objects in the Lucas Museum. I wonder if that makes its galleries (whether treacle or AMPAS-fied) not just different but visually more tedious.
In comparison, rooms in MOCA on Grand Ave or the Geffen Temporary can be given a look-see while rolling through on a skateboard. That setup is further emphasized when curators of the new and trendy love having lots - lots - of blank wall space between objects on display.