Yeah, that surprised me, too. Dennis Hopper is best-known as a director (“Easy Rider,” part of which was photographed on Route 66) and an Oscar-winning actor (“Hoosiers”) who nearly became a booze and drug casualty but straightened himself out nicely during the 1980s.
I found this news release about a Hopper photograph, “Double Standard,” being installed at a high-rise residential art gallery in Marina Del Rey, Calif.
An excerpt:
Hopper’s most famous work, photographed in 1961 through a car windshield, is internationally acclaimed as a visual double entendre with two Standard Oil signs under the billboard “Smart Women Cook with Gas” at a gas station at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard, Melrose Avenue and Doheny Drive.
The triangular corner where the gas station once stood is also the border dividing the two worlds of gritty West Hollywood and posh Beverly Hills.
Hopper was a member of the artist collective in the late 1950s and 60s that became known as the “LA Art Scene” before he shot to stardom co-writing, directing and starring in the classic outlaw biker buddy movie “Easy Rider.” The entire third-floor of the 19-story residential waterfront tower is dedicated to his jolting, documentary-style black and white photography.
His photography that captures the Beat, surfer and Hippie generations are part of a collection of 160 works by 50 artists of the “LA School” permanently exhibited on every floor.
“Double Standard is certainly a Beat Generation photograph, taken not only ‘on the road’ but, as the (street) signs indicate, on legendary Route 66,” wrote Craig Krull in “LA Art Scene, 1955 to 1975,” the definitive book on the era when Los Angeles went from obscurity to worldwide recognition as a powerful force in the art world. “It is a quintessential LA image made from a driver’s perspective, complete with a convertible top and traffic in the rear view (mirror),” wrote Krull, who owns a Santa Monica gallery that’s exhibited the work of LA artists for over 40 years.
The news release has a picture of Hopper at the high-rise, but didn’t include a photograph of the art work. The only image of “Double Standard” I found on the Web is here. It’s small, but it provides a nice window of Route 66 in Southern California in the early 1960s.
There are other Hopper photographs here.
I certainly didn’t know Dennis Hopper was a photographer. Perhaps he took pictures while filming Easy Rider. Was part of Easy Rider filmed on 66?