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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.

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
Went
Painted
House
Collection
Didn
Collections
Wolff
Thought
Abstract
Abstractly
Something
Price
Vincent
People
Amazing
Wholeheartedly
Saws
Richard
Painting
Jackson

More quotes by Dennis Hopper

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I was always involved in art and when I went under contract at Warner Bros. at 18, it afforded me the possibility of never having to stop painting, never having to stop taking photographs and so on, and to actually live a cultural life.
Dennis Hopper
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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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The best and only authentic book written on the sixties underground.
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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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I made a picture called Super Mario Bros., and my six-year-old son at the time - he's now 18 - he said, 'Dad I think you're probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros?' And I said, 'Well Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,' and he said, 'Dad, I don't need shoes that badly.'
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Photography and painting, all of that fed into my directing eventually.
Dennis Hopper
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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.
Dennis Hopper
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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.
Dennis Hopper
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You want to hear about insanity? I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico. At the Mexico City airport, I decided I was in the middle of a movie and walked out on the wing on takeoff. My body... my liver... okay, my brain... went.
Dennis Hopper
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When I was about 14. I saw my first mountain. I saw the ocean for the first time. I remember thinking that that ocean looked very similar to our wheat fields. I didn't know what I thought I would see when I looked out at the ocean, but I thought I'd see something different.
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.
Dennis Hopper
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Just because it happened to you, doesn't mean it's interesting.
Dennis Hopper
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You know, this is such a rich time that we've just been involved in, and there's really a job now for historians. Film is still very young. This is the first hundred years of filmmaking. So I think it's important that we have some sense of history and continuity. Especially in film.
Dennis Hopper
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I should have been dead ten times over. I've thought about that a lot. I believe in miracles. It's an absolute miracle that I'm still around.
Dennis Hopper
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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.
Dennis Hopper
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The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.
Dennis Hopper
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My whole written history is one big lie! I mean, I can't even believe my history.
Dennis Hopper
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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.
Dennis Hopper
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I've always been doing some sort of art. I started off, when I was very young, painting.
Dennis Hopper
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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.
Dennis Hopper