«ANYONE CAN TAKE A GOOD PICTURE»

[Dennis) Hopper’s photographs -- many of which will be seen in an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in July -- speak of vitality and looseness, artistic freedom and energy. They straddle the Beat era and the culture of Pop, Kerouac and Frank on one side, Warhol on the other. He credited Duchamp, whose first retrospective he saw in 1963 at the Pasadena Art Museum, as a seminal influence. “The whole idea of the ready-made and that the artist of the future could be somebody who points their finger and says ‘it’s art’ and it’ll be art,” Hopper recalled in a conversation published in 2001.

“I think of that with my photographs. I think of them as ‘found’ paintings because I don’t crop them, I don’t manipulate them or anything. So they’re like ‘found’ objects to me.”

-L.A Times
May 30 2010