Dennis Hopper Biography

Kansas, USA, 1936

As well as being an accomplished actor and director, Dennis Hopper enjoys a career as a photographer and painter. In the early 60s, after starring in such classic films as Giant and Rebel Without a Cause, Hopper became a fixture in Los Angeles: moving between the Hollywood film and music scenes, and the burgeoning artworld, always with camera in hand.

Within the artworld, Hopper was associated with the seminal Ferus Gallery and the legendary curator Walter Hopps, as well as artists like Edward Keinholz, Wallace Berman and Ed Ruscha. He also spent time in New York at Andy Warhol's infamous Factory. While on the East Coast he documented the often-tumultuous student protests and civil rights marches of the era, keeping his passionate eye on the seismic events of the 60s, culminating in his 1969 directorial tour-de-force Easy Rider.

Starting as a painter engaged with Abstract Expressionism in the late 50s, Hopper soon changed his medium of choice to photography. In 1963, around the same time as Warhol began his iconic silkscreened paintings, Hopper made a series of photographs - shot directly from his black and white television - of Kennedy's state funeral. These images captured the sense of a national catastrophe being mediated as a collective historical event: the medium reinterpreted the event itself, marking the point that history truly became televisual. As a keen observer of American cultural history in the making, Hopper has ever-since sought to map this mythic terrain.

Since the 80s Hopper has expanded his vision to Europe and North Africa, photographing and making paintings of graffiti-marked walls and buildings, emblems of decay, history and age - like living cultural palimpsests. Of course he has also found time to act in such groundbreaking movies as Blue Velvet and Out of the Blue, films which also interrogate the conflicted depths of America's subconscious.

Hopper's new black and white iris prints are editions of portraits from the 60s: people from the film, music and art circles that he moved within. As both formal arrangements and character studies, his portraits of Paul Newman and Bill Cosby convey an understanding of sharp-focused detail - the fence's shadow upon the actor and the copious ivy enveloping the comedian - as well as a sense of introspection and humor, respectively.

Hopper's portraits of James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol also contrast formal elements, yielding penetrating iconographic images of two great artists of our time. (The image of Warhol graced the cover of Artforum magazine in 1964.) In the extraordinary portrait of Ike and Tina Turner, we encounter the husband and wife team in a flamboyant, Dali-esque tableau involving a vast Coke bottle, a circus horse and a washboard huddled around a keyboard: a satirical set-piece for the celebrated musical couple. Hopper has an uncanny knack of catching his subjects in revealing situations, giving the final portraits a really meaningful spin.

selected resume

AWARDS

Distinguished Award, George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House, Rochester, USA, in honor of Achievements in film and art, 1998

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

'Dennis Hopper: Abstract Reality', Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, USA, 2000; Galerie Hans Mayer, Dusseldorf, Germany; Parco Gallery, Tokyo, 1998

'Photographs and Paintings 1961-1993', Spielraum fur Kunst, Furth, Germany, (touring exhibition), 1992-93

'Photographs 1961-67', Shibuyu Parco Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, (touring exhibition), 1989 'Out of the Sixties: Fotographie di Dennis Hopper', Salon La Stampa, Torino, Italy;

Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland, 1988; Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut, Tubingen, Germany; Musee de l'Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1989

'Dennis Hopper: From Method to Madness', Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA, (touring exhibition), 1988

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

'Sunshine & Noir: Art in Los Angeles, 1960-97', Collective Exhibition Museum of Modern Art, Louisiana, Denmark, 1997; Armand Hammer Museum/UCLA, 1998

'Hall of Mirrors: Art and Film since 1945', Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, USA, 1996-97; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy, 1997; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1997-98

'Beat Culture and the New America 1950-65', Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1996

'Proof: Los Angeles Art and the Photograph 1960-1980', Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California, USA, (touring exhibition), 1992-93

'Dennis Hopper - Ed Ruscha', Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, 1992

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dennis Hopper: An American Legend, Photographs from the 1960s, Tony Shafrazi Gallery/Marco, 2000

Brougher, Kerry, Art and Film Since 1945: Hall of Mirrors, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1996

Crow, Thomas, The Rise of the Sixties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent, Harry N Abrams, Inc, New York, 1996

Gallagher, John Andrew, 'Dennis Hopper', Film Directors on Directing, Greenwood Press, New York, 1989

Hoberman, Jim, Dennis Hopper: From Method to Madness, Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis, 1987

FILMOGRAPHY

The Hot Spot, Orion, USA, 1990

Colors, Orion, USA, 1988

Out of the Blue, Gary Jules Juvenat Productions/Discovery Films, Canada/USA, 1980

The Last Movie, Universal, 1971

Easy Rider, Pando Company and Raybert Productions/Columbia Pictures, USA, 1969