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I was an abstract expressionist before I had seen any abstract expressionist paintings. I started when I was a kid and continued just doing abstract stuff all through high school.

Dennis Hopper

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Dennis Hopper
Age: 74 †
Born: 1936
Born: May 17
Died: 2010
Died: May 29
Actor
Art Collector
Artist
Character Actor
Film Actor
Film Director
Filmmaker
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Screenwriter
Sculptor
Dodge City
Kansas
Dennis Lee Hopper
Kids
Continued
School
Paintings
Abstract
Painting
Started
Seen
High
Stuff
Expressionist

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People keep asking me, 'What evil lurks in you to play such bad characters?' There is no evil in me, I just wear tight underwear.
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I was a Shakespearean actor, I had preconceived ideas, line readings - everything was a gesture, everything was conscious.
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Banks wont even loan each other money, everybody's going broke, and here we are inside here, these people are going to be out on the street selling apples and pencils and they're still going to be buying paintings for this money, so I don't know what's going on in this world.
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I've always been doing some sort of art. I started off, when I was very young, painting.
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The inside of the Pentagon is an incredible place and a dramatic set. We do [travel] outside, but the inside workings of the civilian oversight of the military inside the Pentagon is really about as exciting as anything you ever want to deal with. It is really amazing.
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Photography and painting, all of that fed into my directing eventually.
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I think of [my photographs] as found paintings because I don't crop them, I don't manipulate them or anything. So they're like found objects to me.
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I didn't see an abstract painting until I was 18, when I went to Vincent Price's house and saw Richard Niebencorn, Wolff, Jackson Pollack. He had an amazing collection. I didn't know people painted abstractly, I thought I was just doing something wholeheartedly.
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[After Easy Rider] I couldn't get another movie, so I lived in Mexico City for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I didn't take any photographs, and then I went to Japan and saw a Nikon used. I bought it, and I just started, like an alcoholic. I shot 300 rolls of film. That was the beginning of me starting again.
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Art is a bad word in Hollywood. You use art too many times and they show you the elevator and then your name is taken off the parking lot.
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I am just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City and my grandparents were wheat farmers. I thought painting, acting, directing and photography were all part of being an artist. I have made my money that way. And I have had some fun. It's not been a bad life.
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I was very shy, and it was a lot easier for me to communicate if I had a camera between me and other people.
Dennis Hopper
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I was reading a lot of Thomas Jefferson at the time, and Jefferson said that every 20 years, if one party has stayed in power, it's your obligation as an American to vote the other party in.
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The best and only authentic book written on the sixties underground.
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The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.
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I've been a Republican since Reagan. I voted for Bush and his father. I don't tell a lot of people, because I live in a city where somebody who voted for Bush is really an outcast.
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My whole written history is one big lie! I mean, I can't even believe my history.
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Work is fun to me. All those years of being an actor and a director and not being able to get a job - two weeks is too long to not know what my next job will be.
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Jimmy [Dean] was the most talented and original actor I ever saw work. He was also a guerrilla artist who attacked all restrictions on his sensibility. Once he pulled a switchblade and threatened to murder his director. I imitated his style in art and in life. It got me in a lot of trouble.
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Just because it happened to you, doesn't mean it's interesting.
Dennis Hopper