Some questioned the overall caliber of his artwork, and others had mixed feelings about Deitch’s intentions. Although Hopper had long been recognized as an important visual artist by major museums in Europe, this would be his first retrospective in his own country. from Harvard and who co-developed the art-advisory department at Citibank, was the perfect pick for MOCA, which a mere year earlier had been yanked back from the brink of collapse by the town’s most publicized, generous, and polarizing billionaire, Eli Broad.ĭeitch’s decision to make his MOCA debut with the Hopper exhibition was also controversial. (Upon hearing the news, superdealer Larry Gagosian told friends that he was holding out for the Louvre.) Once the shock wore off, however, the consensus seemed to be that Deitch, who has an M.B.A. The appointment of Jeffrey Deitch, a former New York gallery owner, in January had stunned the art world-a dealer had rarely, if ever, been tapped to run a major museum. Between them, they have spent at least $14 million on lawyers trying to resolve such issues as whether both of them can claim ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers. On a recent visit, I found both a wellspring of optimism and growth and a tinderbox of controversy and infighting-not to mention another sensational divorce, that of Jamie McCourt, a trustee of LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MOCA’s much older, larger, and richer rival), and her husband, Frank. The Hopper retrospective comes at an intensely competitive and tricky time for the city’s art museums, the mandarins who run them, and the patrons who support them. I’ve got to stop talking.” He asked me if I could come back the following afternoon, after his doctor’s appointment. Suddenly he said, “Oh man, I’m getting pain in my stomach. (An eight-day marriage to Michelle Phillips, of the Mamas and the Papas, his second, was childless.) Ruthanna, 37, his daughter by his third wife, the actress Daria Halprin, was there with her four-month-old baby, Ella. Marin, 47, his daughter by his first wife, the writer Brooke Hayward, manages Hopper’s studio. Hopper’s two other children were with him that afternoon. And after he and Victoria Duffy Hopper split, she moved into the third, with their seven-year-old daughter, Galen. His 19-year-old actor son, Henry, by his fourth wife, the dancer Katherine LaNasa, lives in one. A few years earlier, on the adjacent lot, Frank Gehry and two artist friends of Hopper’s, Chuck Arnoldi and Laddie John Dill, had erected a trio of nearly identical structures they called “the three little pigs”-one made of concrete, one of plywood, and one of green roofing shingles. We were on the upper floor of Hopper’s house, a big, corrugated-steel box he had built in the late 80s. The occasion for this interview was the retrospective of Hopper’s photography, painting, and sculpture, which was to open on July 11 at MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, in downtown Los Angeles. But we weren’t supposed to talk about that. He was alluding to his separation from his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy Hopper, 42 he had filed for divorce in January. “We’ve been re-arranging,” Hopper explained. “Nobody knows why.” There were also a few blank spots on the walls, with picture hooks still in place. Then I made it into an oil painting.” There were artworks everywhere-on the walls, on the floor, on tables-including a painting of eyeglasses by John Baldessari. ‘Sunday Afternoon Walk in Venice, Italy’ is what that series is called. All my photographs are full-frame, so that’s a full frame. “I took a walk on a Sunday in Venice, Italy. There was a big black painting hanging on the wall behind Hopper. It’s white and it’s clean,” he said with a chuckle. His weight was down to 104 pounds, but gray sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt with the letters STK printed across the front covered that up. His face was somewhat hollowed out, but that just made his sky-blue eyes seem bigger and stranger than ever. For a 74-year-old who was gravely ill, he didn’t look too bad, or perhaps his eagerness to talk and his droll sense of humor made things seem better than they were. The star of Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, and Blue Velvet was lying on a long gray velvet sofa in the loft-like living room of his house in Venice, California, but he sat up to greet me. I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well” was the first thing Dennis Hopper said to me when I went to interview him a month before his death from prostate cancer, on May 29 of this year. ![]() ![]() ![]() Dennis Hopper, photographed at home in Venice, California, a month before his death, with his four children, from left: Marin, Ruthanna, Galen, and Henry.
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