Polaroids Hardcover

Dennis Hopper

Hopper's color Polaroids of LA's gang graffiti After losing himself in Taos, New Mexico, for 15 years, Dennis Hopper (1936-2010) returned to Los Angeles in the mid-'80s. In 1987, on the verge of directing Colors, Hopper made use of a Polaroid camera to document gang graffiti in Los Angeles. He was particularly drawn to the abstract shapes of overlapping paint that appeared when graffiti had been covered up or written over, reminding him, he said, "that art is everywhere in every corner that you choose to frame and not just ignore and walk by." The Polaroids presented for the first time in this book are proof of that observation. Hopper firmly considered himself an "abstract expressionist and action painter by nature, and a Duchampian finger pointer by choice," subscribing wholeheartedly to the idea that "the artist of the future will merely point his finger and say it's art--and it will be art." In turning the instantaneous, disposable nature of the medium of Polaroid film into pictures as deliberate and final as an image achieved by an artist painting on canvas, these images represent the first part of Hopper's journey back to the world of photography, picking up where he had left off so many years before. This book is in many ways a companion to Drugstore Camera (2015), also edited and designed by Michael Schmelling, which presented Hopper's personal photographs taken in Taos, New Mexico.

8862084765

9788862084765

English

Damiani

22/Nov/16

118

Dennis Hopper (1936-2010) was born in Dodge City, Kansas. He first appeared on television in 1954 and quickly became a cult actor, known for films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Easy Rider (1969), The American Friend (1977), Apocalypse Now (1979), Blue Velvet (1986) and Hoosiers (1986). In 1988, he directed the critically acclaimed Colors. Hopper was also a prolific photographer and published now-classic portraits of celebrities such as Andy Warhol and Martin Luther King, Jr. His works are housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.

...his thoughtful Polaroid work in color for the first time ever.--Devon Ivie "Interview "