Method Man

Images courtesy of Ace Gallery

Issue 22 Archives

DENNIS HOPPER TAKES US INTO ANOTHER SIDE OF HIMSELF. THE ART, CREATIVITY AND FUNCTION ALL COME OUT.

One of Hollywood’s most significant (and yes, rather eccentric) actors, Dennis Hopper is also one of art’s best kept secrets. Picking up the camera back in the early 50s when he worked alongside fellow icon James Dean, Dennis Hopper has since snapped a veritable who’s who of the last several decades. His show at Santa Monica’s Ace Gallery includes everyone from Andy Warhol and Paul Newman to Bill Cosby and Martin Luther King Jr. For the man born in Dodge City, Kansas, it’s been a long road to the art world.

What are the challenges of being an artist and a celebrity? Do you feel like an icon?

Well, I think that most of my life being an actor and trying to do anything else usually makes for a very hard time. I think that people just naturally feel that there’s something strange about actors – that they’re probably acting all the time, so to take them [actors] seriously about any other endeavor is very difficult for most people. To cross over from being an actor to being a photographer, a painter, a poet, a screenwriter, a businessman…or whatever, you’re always suspect. It’s that idea of ‘maybe he’s just acting’ or ‘maybe he’s not really a photographer or an artist – maybe he’s just playing a part.’ I think it’s especially the case if you haven’t gone to a university.

Making movies was your education.

I went under contract with Warner Brothers when I was 18 years old, so that was my college. Other people have gone to Duke or Harvard, or Yale, but I say I went to Warner Brothers. The time I started wanting to show my art was in the late 50s, early 60s, and it was very difficult to show with anybody if you hadn’t attended some sort of college or had some sort of certification to show that you were a bona fide artist. So it took me a really long time to exhibit with the people that I wanted to.

Is film more of an inspiration to you than photography?

Film is photography…

More specifically, is it your film experiences that inspire your art?

Like I said, I was an actor. I went under contract when I was 18, did Rebel Without a Cause and Giant with James Dean back-to-back and I was taking photographs. I was also painting and writing poetry. I didn’t think any of these disciplines were foreign to an actor. I read Seven Lessons in Acting by Richard Boleslavsky, and in that book he has a character called the Creature, and she wants to come to the teacher to study acting. So the teacher asks her if she knows all the contemporary literature of the day, the contemporary art of the day, the contemporary poets…and the woman says, “no.” And the teacher says, “How dare you come and ask to study with me when you don’t know these things because as an actor you need to know these things!” I felt that that was good advice for a young man, so I started hanging out at art galleries and created my own art while making movies.

And let me just add one more thing: when you direct a movie – the first movie I directed was Easy Rider [with Jack Nicholson] when I was 30 years old – all these things, all the arts like writing, set design, photography, acting, camera, music…come into play, and every director should know that.

What gives you the ideas for your painting, photographs and technique?

I live in Los Angeles, and we drive everywhere to go from one place to another. Nobody walks or takes the transit system because it really doesn’t function that well. So everything that I see here is from the car: billboards, graffiti, palm trees. I’ve dealt with graffiti, I’ve dealt with gangs, I’ve dealt with billboards and that’s basically what I’ve used in my work. The work is sort of like a landscape of Los Angeles and it also deals with artists that I’ve met over the years.

What are your feelings about the new digital format in photography? Do you still use film?

I’m using digital now. It’s the difference between printing something with chemicals and spraying something with ink. It’s like you’re painting with light in digital – there’s a much different feeling to it.

In what international market is your work best received?

I’ve had a really good market in Germany, and the French are starting to look at it.

Why do you think Germany is so taken?

Germany was the first one that really accepted Pop Art and they brought most of our [American] masterpieces from the 60s to Berlin, Cologne and Stuttgart. A lot of Warhol’s work, when it began to falter in the United States, was taken up in Germany and it really put him on the map again.

In an interview you had regarding the duality of the persona of James Dean, you said something about having the vulnerability of Montgomery Clift on one hand and the strength of Marlon Brando on the other. Using that same analogy, what do you feel you have in both hands regarding your art?

I don’t know. I can talk about influences.

In relation to your painting and photography and visuals, how have you been able to use the acting studio method to your advantage?

I studied with [Lee] Strasburg, and method acting to him was using your senses – smell, taste, sight, hearing and touch. That’s the way you go from your conscious mind into your subconscious to bring out a real emotion. It’s just like tuning yourself as an instrument, so that when you’re acting you have all your emotions at your fingertips. Very often Strasberg would take something like a Van Gogh painting and he would have us look at the shoes or the chair to feel the sensuality of the painting. So this idea of relating was always part of my acting.