Dennis Hopper has always loaded me with the perception of being an artist who has been really successful at turning the screws, and manipulating the world he is a part of. Be it as an actor and his proclivity to be involved in really far out projects (at least in terms of the Hollywood Standard), an “important” collector of twentieth century art, or a director and photographer of consummate skill, there is that wild-eyed sharpness that such sorts of domesticated stray cats might have. At once skeptical of its new surroundings, grateful for the warmth and food, but already plotting a way back onto the street. Hopper started out in the 1950’s after moving from Oklahoma to a flat, burgeoning Los Angeles, where he began by taking pictures and painting, joined up and created a “dream colony” where he was an integral part in bringing light to the art scene of 1960’s Los Angeles.

Hopper’s stories are seducing as hell, a lifetime in front of the camera translates this ease to the stage, and his recollections from an often hazed out past are incredibly clear. Buying an Ed Ruscha from him in his studio for $200, with post-Easy Rider successes the studio let him bring in some of his friends to test pilot an independent filmmaker program, and Wallace Berman turned him down flat out, it goes on and on.

Easy Rider was the fruition of his creative intentions, citing that filmmaking was the combination of everything before it, and with the ferocity of needing to do it on his own terms ended up making one of the most successful independent films in history. But the lifestyle of the stray cat in certain ways caught up with him, as his heroic attempt to puncture Hollywood with his epic The Last Movie (1971) seems to have fallen on deaf ears and hasten his fall from grace. The drugs stopped in 1983 after what sounds like to me, one of the most amazing performances in the epoch of early performance art.

1981- Dennis Hopper at a Houston, Texas car racing track situates himself inside of a ring of dynamite, and sits on a chair. Now apparently; this stunt that he learned from a roadshow when he was young, and the deal is if you situate the dynamite facing outwards the blast creates a vacuum of air in the middle, “like the eye of a hurricane,” and after all of the theatrics, the sitter comes out just fine. The setting, conditions, uncertainty, was all a a big part of this performance that really epitomizes the commitment of the artist’s body in early performance art.

Call me old fashioned, but these days not only has the outsourcing production of objects undermined the artist’s physical connection to the work, but the production value, level of planning, and exquisite execution of the idea is so endemic of performance art. There are of course exceptions, and hopefully a new wave of artists will reject the technical acuity in as Thomas Hirschhorn says, “…energy, not perfection.” I think it is pretty goddamn time for the artist to be reckless, over-stimulated, but ultimately fully indoctrinated into the cycle of creation.

Taking the dettached modes of performance and production as larger economic models, we can see how this has undermined the United States domestic manufacturing base, the vast majority of the population is engaged as a consumer, rather than a commodity producer, from transportation to food. If this hollowing out of our country on a big format is any indication, unless artists renew their commitment to being (as the 2007 buzz word would have it) sustainable, the country, and artists themselves are going to in a world of hurt when a big shift is forced upon us.

So I doubt that Hopper’s conversation tonight really had any connection to these thoughts, but if idea of him as a maverick in terms of raising hell, having the clarity to see and hold on to amazing art at a time when the eyes weren’t on it, making films more or less along his own lines means anything, then we should heavily consider putting things back in to our own hands all across the board.

Dennis Hopper Video Still from Bomb Drop (1981)