Dennis Lee Hopper
Leon Bing with Rudi Gernreich
During the 1960s, Dennis Hopper carried a camera everywhere—on film sets and locations, at parties, in diners, bars and galleries, driving on freeways and walking on political marches. He photographed movie idols, pop stars, writers, artists, girlfriends, and complete strangers. Along the way he captured some of the most intriguing moments of his generation with a keen and intuitive eye. A reluctant icon at the epicenter of that decade’s cultural upheaval, Hopper documented the likes of Tina Turner in the studio, Andy Warhol at his first West Coast show, Paul Newman on set, and Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
In many ways this work is photography as film, a poignant narrative expressed through a series of stark images–early shots of Tijuana bullfights, LA happenings and urban street scenes show an experimental freedom that would translate into the vivid cinematic imagery of Easy Rider and beyond.
From a selection of photographs compiled by Hopper and gallerist Tony Shafrazi—more than a third of them previously unpublished—this extensive volume distills the essence of Hopper's brilliantly prodigious photographic career. Also included are introductory essays by Tony Shafrazi and legendary West Coast art pioneer Walter Hopps, and an extensive biography by journalist Jessica Hundley. With excerpts from Victor Bockris's interviews of Hopper's famous subjects, friends, and family, this volume is an unprecedented exploration of the life and mind of one of America’s most fascinating personalities.
The photographer:
Dennis Hopper (1936-2010) was an acclaimed artist, actor, screenwriter, and director who first impressed audiences with his performances in Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). He changed the face of American cinema with Easy Rider (1969), which he co-wrote, directed, and starred in. Hopper went on to act in hundreds of memorable films and television shows, including Apocalypse Now (1979), Blue Velvet (1986), Hoosiers (1986), True Romance (1993), Basquiat (1997), Elegy (2008), and the TV series Crash (2008). Hopper began painting as a child and started taking photos in 1961, after his then wife Brooke Hayward gave him a 35mm Nikon camera for his birthday. His paintings and photography have been exhibited all over the world, including the recent retrospective, "Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood" in Paris. Dennis Hopper passed away May 29, 2010 in Venice, CA.
Dennis Hopper (1936-2010) was an acclaimed artist, actor, screenwriter, and director who first impressed audiences with his performances in Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). He changed the face of American cinema with Easy Rider (1969), which he co-wrote, directed, and starred in. Hopper went on to act in hundreds of memorable films and television shows, including Apocalypse Now (1979), Blue Velvet (1986), Hoosiers (1986), True Romance (1993), Basquiat (1997), Elegy (2008), and the TV series Crash (2008). Hopper began painting as a child and started taking photos in 1961, after his then wife Brooke Hayward gave him a 35mm Nikon camera for his birthday. His paintings and photography have been exhibited all over the world, including the recent retrospective, "Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood" in Paris. Dennis Hopper passed away May 29, 2010 in Venice, CA.
(http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/photography/all/01070/facts.dennis_hopper_photographs_19611967.htm)
His greatest claim to fame came in the swimsuit line where he designed the topless swim suit that sold 3000 units in one summer. Gernreich changed the way women dress. At the beach, the Gernreich unstructured bathing suit is still the preferred model for one piece suits.
Gernreich's design for a "no bra" bra is still the undergarment of choice for most women in the Western world. It was a radical departure from the pointy, torpedo shaped bras that were popular in the '50s and early '60s.
Rudi Gernreich having been the victom of an entrapment case became one of the five original members of the Mattachine Society, the gay-rights organization founded by Harry Hay, then his lover. But Gernreich never declared himself publicly. He did not come out, until after his death, when his estate and that of his partner of 31 years, Oreste Pucciani, provided an endowment for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Rudi Gernreich was the first to use cutouts in clothes. He was the first to use vinyl & plastic in clothes. He Introduced androgyny -- men's suits & hats, etc. on women. He designed the first see-through clothes. Rudi Gernreich designed the first soft transparent bra--the "no bra "bra. He invented body clothes based on leotards & tights. He used hardware such as zippers, and dog leash clasps as decoration. He did the first designer jeans. He designed the first thong bathing suit. He was the first to design men's underwear for women.
Rudi Gernreich met Oreste Pucciani, who as chairman of the U.C.L.A. French department was instrumental in bringing Sartre to the attention of American academics. Oreste Pucciani was a pivotal figure in the gay rights movement.
'60s conceptualist fashion. High Art fashion. Its not just fashion; it is a way of life. Life as theatre. Today the stereotypical promiscuous sexual gay lifestyle and queer fashion is being appropriated by hetero culture. They realized how much fun, they were missing and now what to join in the "gay" promiscuous lifestyle. Hahaha. I remember sneaking out of the house at 14, with my friend Kyle, and going to the bars South of Market, in San Francisco, the leather men in chaps walking around on the streets; they scared us. Oh, and most places didnt card, you could sneak in almost anywhere. They started getting strict in '95. We use to make fun of these guys, and their "fashion", with their handle bar moustaches, we were so cool, they were "old queens" with bad taste. Oh and the Crisco parties in the warehouses, South of Market. Noone mentions these anymore. Still taboo. You always knew what club, to avoid if the floors were greasy/slippery; run as fast as you can out the door. They would try to pull you in, especially if you were cute, and young.
They lived in gay ghetto isolation; in their gay fabulous underworld. Now they are in style. It's too funny, it hurts. Its still isolating being gay. They still call the Castro the "hood", like the black underclass that live in segregated inner city ghettos. Who chooses to be black; who chooses to be gay. It's not a lifestyle choice. Up until recently it was like being forced to wear the yellow star of David in Nazi Germany, so everyone can identify you, and point you out, for who you are. Queer. You're a target. Gay S&M fashion once a underground gay leather subculture, has gone mainstream. Slings, today are so ra-cha-cha. This is a lifestyle/fashion, but not the kind Rudi Gernreich did; he was cutting edge, but today he would be too cutting edge. Boring drag queens get all the press today but they're so flat, and predictable; they have no insight. They all look the same. Drag Queen conformity is so chic.The real queens of the past, like Rudi Gernreich, and Quentin Crisp, Joe Orton, Jean Genet, Truman Capote,Jean Cocteau ( true God) were so brilliant, they defied convention, they weren't subservient to it. (more at; http://www.examiner.com/article/rudi-gernreich-60s-gay-outsider-fabulousness)
BOOK REPORT
by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp
"I’m either a dumb person at the core of a smart one or an intelligent woman who can make some really stupid choices." So writes Léon Bing in the epilogue to her new memoir, Swans and Pistols: Modeling, Motherhood, and Making It in the Me Generation.
A marriage to television director Mack Bing and the birth of their daughter Lisa follows, before she winds up back in Los Angeles in the 1960s. After the marriage falls apart, Bing goes back to work, becoming the top model for Rudi Gernreich. (His other model, Peggy Moffitt, has moved to London with photographer husband William Claxton.)
With Gernreich she is posing on the steps of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for a photograph of artists and designers when she spies Ed Ruscha, also there for the photo-session. She insists Gernreich introduce them and after that, as she says, "It was on." Ruscha, not long married to his wife Danna and a new father, is smitten by the long-legged cover girl and begins a torrid affair that continues for four years. She brings Ruscha to the home of her good friend Mama Cass and has sex with him in her swimming pool.
It must have been true love, for she also agreed to star in Ruscha’s legendary Premium, a book of photographs and later a movie. In both she is the date of a nattily dressed Larry Bell, the sculptor, riding in a Pierce Arrow driven by Tommy Smothers. Bell escorts her to a hotel room where she undresses and gets into a bed covered in lettuce. Bell then douses her with salad dressing and leaves to get. . . crackers. Premium brand saltines, of course. Her affair with Ruscha ultimately comes to an end but he gives her a large word painting, Listen, I’d Like to Help Out, But --.
Still more colorful men enter her life. She befriends gangster Mickey Cohen, producer David Merrick and for three years lives with Nick Barbosa, whom she describes as a "successful, mid-range cocaine dealer." It is the early ‘80s when such a calling had significant social cachet in free-wheeling L.A. When it concludes, Bing is left to fend for herself.
Where most such memoirs might grind to a sad halt, Bing reinvents herself again, this time as an author of articles and books on what might seem the least probable topic: gang wars. (Though she does seem to have a rather tender outlook on mobsters.)
Her first book, Do and Die, about the Crips and Bloods in L.A., came out in 1991 and was praised by critics, who could hardly help but be amazed by the beauty of its author. The current memoir is her fourth book, a summation of a most unusual life, and at the conclusion, one can hardly help but recall the wisdom of Mae West: good girls go to heaven but bad girls, and lucky girls, get to go everywhere.
Dennis Hopper took most of the glamorous photographs that appear in Bing’s memoir. Hopper’s photos are featured as well in a substantial new book that not only makes a case for Hopper as a photographer but also chronicles his work as actor, director and all-around rogue. Those familiar with his photographs of the 1960s L.A. art scene will find few surprises here, but the images retain a certain timeless appeal. From Jasper Johns to Jane Fonda, the crowd is lovely, funny and fashionable, and we are lucky today that Hopper was around to take their pictures.
Informal and inventive, Hopper definitely had his own esthetic, whether he was capturing images from his home life with actor Brooke Hayward, or friends like Paul Newman, the sets of various films, the civil rights marches in the Montgomery, rodeo riders, rock bands and, of course, naked girls.
An added boon is the essay written about Hopper and L.A. in the ‘60s by the late, great Walter Hopps. The legendary curator chronicles Hopper’s drug-addled obsession with guns when he lived in Taos, years that the book frankly and accurately labels as "Into Oblivion." Another essay by art dealer Tony Shafrazi, who edited the book and now shows Hopper’s photos and paintings, chronicles his long friendship with the 72-year-old actor and artist.
Marvelous in many ways, the publication also gives concrete meaning to the notion of a book as "a valuable addition to your library." The signed limited edition of 100, which includes a Hopper print, is $1,800, while copies from the signed edition of 1,500 are priced at $700.
Léon Bing, Swans and Pistols: Modeling, Motherhood, and Making It in the Me Generation, Bloomsbury, $25.
Dennis Hopper, Dennis Hopper: Photographs, 1961-1967, Taschen, $1,800 and $700.
HUNTER DROHOJOWSKA-PHILP writes about contemporary art in Los Angeles.(via: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/books/drohojowska-philp/leon-bing11-12-09.asp)
