BOB COLACELLO ON DENNIS HOPPER

“Dennis was passionate about art from Day 1,” recalled Bob Colacello, the writer who interviewed him shortly before his death for a story in this month’s issue of Vanity Fair. “He bought Ed Ruscha’s first Standard gas station painting, which is now in Sid Bass’s collection, and one of Andy’s Campbell’s soup cans for $75 in 1962.”In the early 1960’s, Mr. Colacello said, Hopper transformed his house in the Hollywood Hills into a haven for Pop Art. He bought several billboard images and literally wallpapered the house with them. The home was filled with art by Warhol and Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and David Salle. “He would mix real art with folk art and found art,” Mr. Colacello said. But after his marriage to Brooke Hayward dissolved in 1969, “she got most of the collection in the divorce and has been selling it off piecemeal,” Mr. Colacello said. And that was just his first marriage. It proved tough keeping a collection together through four more. (He was estranged from his fifth wife, Victoria Hopper, when he died.) His estate has consigned what is left to Christie’s, which will be auctioning it off Nov. 10 and 11 in New York. Highlights include a portrait of Hopper that Andy Warhol painted in 1971, which is estimated to bring $800,000 to $1.2 million, and a 1987 Basquiat painting expected to sell for $5 million to $7 million. All the works are estimated to bring $10 million.

NY Times
July 14 2010