From • @tsptr We've all been there. It's late, you're at home and you're spooked by one of your works of art – an Andy Warhol screen print of a smiling, smug Chairman Mao – so you pick up a gun and shoot it. One as a warning, the next through his eye Dennis Hopper was taking drugs in order to sober up quicker so he could start drinking again at the time. His friend, and the works creator, Andy Warhol thought the gun play was hilarious and subsequently annotated the two holes labelling them ‘warning shot’ and ‘bullet hole’ Hopper bought one of Andy Warhol’s first soup-can prints for seventy-five bucks at the 1962 Ferus Gallery show, Warhol’s first on the west Coast. It should have been a good investment but then Hopper lost it to his first ex-wife as part of the divorce settlement. She also picked-up a Roy Lichtenstein that Hopper had bought for just over a thousand dollars. The ex-wife sold it for $3k. If she’d kept it she could have made a cool $16 million. But it was never about money for Hopper: “My idea of collecting is not going and buying bankable names, but buying people that I believe are really contributing something to my artistic life” It was Vincent Price who first hipped Hopper to art. He told him “You need to collect—this is where you need to put your money.” But it wasn’t about money—it was “a calling.” “I always thought that acting was art, writing was art, music was art, painting was art, and I’ve tried to keep that cultural vibe to my life” Hopper became friends with a number of artist including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha. Hopper left a vast collection of artwork—paintings by Warhol, Haring, Schnabel and Basquiat. He saw himself as a custodian—keeping the art until he died and it was given over to a museum #tsptr #dennishopper #andywarhol #chairmanmao #popart https://www.instagram.com/p/Co0OOC7rj9wVjNRPxT2EbEs3Ahkl8C3SVwRsys0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
