Dennis Hopper

Wilhold Up the Mirror Photograph and Mixed Media Assemblage Wall Hanging Artwork

1961

Dennis Hopper, (American, 1936-2010) Mixed media sculpture "Outmolding Older Concepts (Wilhold Up the Mirror)", 1961, photo and assemblage, Ace gallery and Easy Rider Production labels verso 27"h x 40"w x 5"d. There is broken mirror glued into the wooden collage box with the ceramic head that is attached to the front. I assume that is how it was made. Provenance: Estate of Pentti Kouri, NYC; Ace Gallery, Los Angeles; Exhibited MOCA, Los Angeles, 2010 From a 1997 interview with Hopper where he references this piece "Right now it's very intense. I had a show that travelled Germany, about 15 different museums. Sunday we go to Denmark; I'm showing the early assemblage I did in 1961 which was the signal for conceptual art. I'm just two days there, then I'm going to Venice to meet Julian Schnabel - Count Volpe's given us a place to paint in Giudecca. Then I'm going to Documenta in Germany to hang another show, then I go back to LA on the 21st and start a film on the 23rd." Notes/Literature: Dr. Pentti Kouri(1949-2009) was a Finnish economist and venture capitalist with partner George Soros. He built his prestigious art collection with the goal of opening a private art foundation focused on his interests in Minimalism, Arte Povera, Conceptual and Text-based art. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Dia Art Foundation, and on the boards of Tate, London and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. In addition, a portion of his collection forms the core of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland Hopper made his film debut alongside James Dean in 1955's Rebel Without a Cause. Both lost souls from dysfunctional households, they gravitated to each other, smoked dope and took joy rides. When Dean died, Hopper saw himself as the natural inheritor of his rebellious mantle and, revelling in his nickname of "Dennis the Menace", gave it to Hollywood with both barrels; so they dropped him. Dennis didn't make another Hollywood movie for seven years. Frustrated by the deliberate stifling of his film career, Dennis turned to art and photography for creative stimulus, beginning with abstract subjects such as landscapes. His cutting-edge conceptual art became established round the world, with exhibitions in major cities. At home in the dining room stood one particularly interesting work, a white plastic box, eight feet long, that had an aluminium shaft sticking out of it, and two very large balls. It was called The Perpetual Erection Machine. Before Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, there was Dennis. In 1961, Hopper took part in an international photography competition in Australia with a contribution of five abstract photos, which he called Pieces. He won first place. Soon after, Hopper married Hayward, daughter of the film producer Leland Hayward, whose credits include The Sound of Music and South Pacific. The wedding party of Hopper and Hayward was held in August at the apartment of actress Jane Fonda, a childhood friend of Hayward, who introduced Hopper to her younger brother Peter Fonda. Their daughter Marin was born in 1961, and they moved to Bel Air, California. Soon afterward the famous Bel Air fire destroyed their home, including approximately three-hundred Abstract Expressionist works and hundreds of pages of poetry that Hopper had begun in the mid-1950s. Hopper and his actor friends Dean Stockwell and Russ Tamblyn were close to many artists in California, especially assemblage artists Edward Kienholz...

Sorry for the reflection on the plexi. In the early 1980s, the Polaroid Foundation invited Hungarian-born painter and photographer György Kepes (1906-2001) to use the 20x24 Polaroid camera. The resulting carefully staged compositions summarize many of his artistic concerns, employing such objects as prisms, flowers, and graphic papers to manipulate the effects of light and form. György Kepes 1906-2001 was a Hungarian-born painter, photographer, designer, educator, and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus (later the School of Design, then Institute of Design, then Illinois Institute of Design or IIT) in Chicago. In 1967 He founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he taught until his retirement in 1974. Kepes was born in Selyp, Hungary. His younger brother was Imre Kepes, ambassador in Argentina, father of András Kepes journalist, documentary filmmaker and author. At age 18, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, where he studied for four years with Istvan Csok, a Hungarian impressionist painter. In the same period, he was also influenced by the socialist avant-garde poet and painter Lajos Kassak. Kepes gave up painting temporarily and turned instead to filmmaking. In 1930, he settled in Berlin, where he worked as a publication, exhibition and stage designer. Around this time, he designed the dust jacket for Gestalt psychologist Rudolf Arnheim's famous book, Film als Kunst (Film as Art), one of the first published books on film theory. In Berlin, he was also invited to join the design studio of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the Hungarian photographer who had taught at the Dessau Bauhaus. When, in 1936, Moholy relocated his design studio to London, Kepes joined him there as well. Kepes was lured to Brooklyn College by Russian-born architect Serge Chermayeff, who had been appointed chair of the Art Department in 1942. There he taught graphic artists such as Saul Bass. In 1944, he published Language of Vision, an influential book about design and design education. In part, the book was important because it predated three other influential texts on the same subject: Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design (1946), László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (1947), and Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (1954). In 1947, Kepes accepted an invitation from the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT to initiate a program there in visual design, a division that later became the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (c1968). Some of the Center's early fellows included artists Otto Piene, Vassilakis Takis, Jack Burnham, Wen-Ying Tsai, Stan Vanderbeek, Maryanne Amacher, Joan Brigham, Lowry Burgess, Peter Campus, Muriel Cooper, Douglas Davis, Susan Gamble, Dieter Jung, Piotr Kowalski, Charlotte Moorman, Antoni Muntadas, Yvonne Rainer, Keiko Prince, Alan Sonfist, Aldo Tambellini, Joe Davis, Bill Seaman, Tamiko Thiel, Alejandro Sina, Don Ritter, Luc Courchesne, and Bill Parker...

Pezhman was born in 1976 in Shiraz – the center of Iran’s cultural civilization. Emigrating three years later as the result of the revolution, Pezhman grew up in the United States. A...

This is a beautiful layered, mixed media piece using acrylic ink, salt water and salt crystals, on unprocessed photographic paper. The video shows the salt crystals shimmering on the paper when light reflects off it. This piece conjures up a beautiful imaginary world. The layering of works, creating depth, process and nature are important elements of the artist' work . For example, salt crystallization has been used on found objects and encrusted on photo based works on paper. The salt crystallization process is similar to preserving some objects, while disintegrating others with time. By incorporating salt crystals onto the photo based paintings, the image presents a mystical otherworldly feel, capturing and refracting light and the slippage of time. 20x24 in. Signed en verso. Singular piece. Art exclusively at gallery. Inquire to view series, collection. Inquire to commission projects. Framing available. --- Christine Nguyen is a Los Angeles based artist. She received her B.F.A from California State University, Long Beach and M.F.A from University of California, Irvine. As an artist, she is inspired by literature, science, nature, astronomy, geology, marine biology. Using photography’s processes as a point of departure, Christine Nguyen’s pioneering spirit led her to begin manipulating negatives and onward–creating her own by cutting, layering, and adding on. Nguyen’s subsequent explorations embrace drawing...