Dennis Hopper (a keen eye) : artist, photographer, filmmaker /

It may surprise many that the actor/director Dennis Hopper best known as the auteur of the 1969 counterculture anthem Easy Rider has since the 1950s been a dedicated and prolific photographer, painter, and sculptor. Hopper's identity has changed from greasy eminence to minence grise, and he has now acquired celebrity as an art-world icon. This book accompanies a retrospective held at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art. Included with the plentiful illustrations of the more than 100 artworks in the exhibition are an essay by critic Fuchs (contributor to monographs on Karel Appel, Peter Halley, and others) in which we get a full picture of the peripatetic lifestyle of the filmmaker-artist, and an interview by Stedelijk curator Sassen highlighting the palpable influence of Hopper's friends Richard Diebenkorn and Edward Kienholz upon his art. The formal language of Hopper's paintings places him within the West Coast school of abstraction, while his far less interesting photographs of the 1960s are largely snapshots of friends and associates. As the first book on an important art name, this is recommended for all larger collections. Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.