Half an hour before Julian Schnabel was scheduled to begin his
curatorial lecture on the solo Dennis Hopper retrospective in the
little Tokyo MoCa, a line stretched out the door and around the
corner. To amuse the crowd at the front of the line and those of
us waiting in a separate area, a gallery attendant demonstrated a
performance utilizing a Chris Burden sculpture, wherein a
stationary motorcycle was ridden, and the wheels on the bike
provided enough energy to turn an oversize iron wheel that
looked to weigh as much as a compact car. Light applause
followed. Fifteen minutes before the start of the lecture, every
one with a blue ticket was ushered into the side gallery where
Hopper’s work filled several of the museums smaller
interconnected rooms. Some gathered in the front, some wandered
through the adjoining rooms.
Schnabel’s reputation preceded him: as a larger than life
character, darling of the 80’s art boom, and one of the few
artists to successfully break into Hollywood, notably directing
2007’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,”
which was nominated for 4 Oscars, and having just directed
William Dafoe, Freida Pinto, and Vanessa Redgrave in
“Miral,” a chronicle of Hind Husseini's effort to
establish an orphanage in Jerusalem after the 1948 partition of
Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.
I had heard
that Schnabel wore his pajamas in public, but I was still mildly
shocked when he arrived, at the top of the stairs, bare-chested
and wearing what could euphemistically be described as a navy
“leisure suit” with white piping. The crowd was so
thick that he couldn’t pass through the top of the stairs.
Although he had intended the intimate type of gallery walk
wherein a curator and small group of aficionados stroll from
canvas to canvas, he was forced to address several hundred of us
in the front gallery from an elevated position in the
entry.
Schnabel began with Hopper’s own words, reciting a poem
Hopper had written about his boyhood in Kansas, and every one was
a little spooked when a series of noises disrupted the poem; an
alarm probably set off by some one standing too close to a
sculpture and the strange groaning of a what I guess was the
plumbing system led Schnabel to quip, “He’s with us
now.” And in image, at least, he was. For Hopper’s
own visage stared at us in polymer resin, as a near to life sized
black and white cowboy, standing in an island of too limey green
Sequoias, and also in monumental canvases reproduced from his
photographs, in which he documented his fascination with and
friendship with artists such as Warhol and Lichtenstein, founders
of Pop.
Schnabel ‘s magnanimous attitude characterized his
description of the work; he emphasized Hopper as a Conceptual
artist although most everyone else would likely see him as an
actor who brought in his naturally mimetic qualities to work that
varied from Abstract Expressionist to Dada to Photorealist
influences. Though I agree that the work is conceptually
grounded, and I was impressed to learn that Hopper had even met
Duchamp, I think that Hopper was too invested in object making to
really qualify as a Conceptualist in the more frequently used
definition of the term within the art lexicon. But I’m just
parsing semantics. Schnabel , after all, is known as an
iconoclast, and listening to him speak, it was clear he had no
qualms about using his curatorial might to benefit an old friend,
that he was the type of guy who would stand up for those he cares
for and feel no sense of embarrassment. He stated that Hopper
“painted his own paintings,” yet elsewhere I read
that Hopper’s larger work, blown up reproductions of
Hopper’s photos, had been painted by hired hands. It would
seem that Hopper painted some of his own paintings. The large
scale sculptures, which reference the ubiquitous kitsch of the
California highways, were also fabricated by others under
Hopper’s supervision. That hardly makes him any different
than Hirsch, Murakami, or Koons. Except perhaps it seems—to
some—doubly unfair, that Hopper has crossed posthumously from
Hollywood into the type of canonization that a solo retrospective
in a major metropolitan museum almost guarantees: the two
machines, the two star systems, seemingly much farther apart than
the 2462 miles between their respective
epicenters in New York and Los Angeles.
There’s something
of a jealous tinge to some of the negative reviews of
Hopper’s work. But that’s life. It isn’t easy,
and it isn’t fair. And when you win too many games people
will assume, perhaps themselves unfairly, that you’ve
cheated. So I recommend trying not to think “this is a
movie star” you go see the show, and try to approach it
with an open mind. At the same time, the types of decisions that
Hopper makes, which Schnabel calls “conceptual” I
would say come from being an actor who is also an artist. While
the art marketing machine pushes artists to create a sort of
“identity” or association and loyalty to a particular
school of thought or movement, and then repeat endless variations
upon their signature, as an actor, Hopper seemed to have felt a
freedom o play various roles as an artist in a way that artists
coming from academia are discouraged to explore. I feel that is
the other reason for some of the harsh critiques. He’s not
playing by the same (unwritten, unspoken) rules.
At the close of Schnabel’s lecture, the highly esteemed
abstract painter Ed Moses, who was also in attendance, said that
Hopper’s real legacy was “Easy Rider” and
“Blue Velvet.” Schnabel, of course, disagreed.
History, I believe, will redeem what is beautiful, and what is
true. Where does Hopper’s work fall into either category?
Why don’t you go see for yourself, and draw your own
conclusion?
Over 200 Dennis Hopper works are on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Geffen Center from July 11 to September 26, 2010. His work is represented in New York by the Tony Shafrazi Gallery and in Los Angeles by David Lawrence Gallery.