Easy Rider: Dennis Hopper at the MOCA

“It gives you a whole new way of looking at the day,” Dennis Hopper’s character Billy says in the unforgettable film, Easy Rider, which the then 33-year-old Hopper also directed. Billy had marijuana in mind when he said those words, but the same could be said of Hopper’s photography and painting. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles presents Dennis Hopper: Double Standard, the first comprehensive survey of Hopper’s art. Hopper, who passed away on May 29^th of this year, never fit into a neat category as an actor or director. His art shares that same elusive quality of boundarilessness born of great breadth and versatility. Hopper rides easily through whatever media he chooses to express himself in, always giving you a new way of looking at the day. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Easy Rider."

[Image: Dennis Hopper, Double Standard, 1961, gelatin silver print, © The Estate of Dennis Hopper, image courtesy of The Estate of Dennis Hopper and Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York.]



[Many thanks to the The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for providing me with the image above and press materials for Dennis Hopper: Double Standard, which runs through September 26, 2010.]

Change We Can Believe In

In just another of the many signs of the radical changing of the guard with the Presidency of Barack Obama comes news that the First Couple will be decorating their private living space with modern art by masters such as Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns (whose Three Flags, from 1958, appears above). Interior designer Michael Smith is asking museums across the country to suggest works from their modern and contemporary art collections that they’d be willing to loan to the Obamas. After the previous 8 years of anti-intellectualism, anti-modernism, and anti-Americanism, it will be nice to know that the work of living, breathing artists will grace the walls of the leader of the free world and inspire him to new heights. Perhaps this signals a new embrace of culture and the arts by our government, even at this time of financial crisis. At the very least, I doubt Obama will request any art just because he thinks the guy looks like him.