Dennis Hopper: actor, director and – yes – brilliant photographe. Last week Jeffrey Deitch, the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (Moca) in Los Angeles, announced that his first exhibition, scheduled for July, will feature the paintings and photographs of Dennis Hopper.
It will be curated by Hopper's close friend, the artist and film-maker Julian Schnabel. Hopper, who will be 74 next month, is a semi-mythic figure both as an actor and director, but his art and photography are less well-known. In the blogosphere, the announcement raised questions about art-world nepotism, as well as the blurring of the boundaries between art and show business. "This is exactly the sort of PT Barnum extravaganza, dripping with cronyism, star-fucking and insider dealing, that Deitch's main detractors feared he would bring to Moca," wrote Steven Kaplan on post.thing.net. New Pictures 1: Noriko Furunishi. MANJARI SHARMA PHOTOGRAPHY.