Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper's artistry has always extended to all facets of his life--from the films he as written, directed, and starred in, to his patronage of the arts and the avant-garde company he has kept, to his own photography and his painting. This new publication focuses on his paintings, which often refer to his cinematic and photographic work--Hopper incorporates photos and film stills into his canvases, arraying his works in diptychs and triptychs. Dennis Hopper: Paintings, Photographs, Films presents this complicated artist in all of his diversity, showing the outgoing public figure, the voyeuristic photographer, and, above all, the introverted painter. In addition to extensive full-color documentation of his paintings, Dennis Hopper: Paintings, Photographs, Films features texts--an essay by prominent art critic Rudi Fuchs and an interview between Hopper and Jan-Hein Sassen--that explore Hopper's visual art in unprecedented depth, situating him within the contemporary American art scene, and looking at his relationships with other artists, including Richard Diebenkorn, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, and Alex Katz.

Dennis Hopper, one of Hollywood's last great cult figures, is best known for his depiction of social outcasts in films such as Rebel Without a Cause and Apocalypse Now, as well as for directing classic films like Easy Rider. Hopper has also, however, made a name for himself as an artist and a photographer. His photographic chronicle of America in the 1960s, a decade marked by awakening and rebellion and documented by Hopper in forceful black-and-white pictures, has now become legendary. A System of Moments, published on the occasion of a major retrospective exhibition at the MAK, Vienna, is a kaleidoscopic documentation of painting, photography, film, and life. It is the first comprehensive publication that takes in to account all of the diverse artistic activities in Hopper's nearly 50-year career, and it examines particularly the subtle connection between genres that is a hallmark of his work. For the first time, recent photographic works, which emerged after a long hiatus from the medium in the 1990s, are also presented. A major retrospective that will be the definitive statement on Hopper's career.