Video 14:51, narrated by Gene Hackman. The art of Georgia O’Keeffe has been well known for eight decades in this country and for many years has been attaining similar prominence abroad.

More than 500 examples of her works are in over 100 public collections in Asia, Europe, and North and Central America. In addition, since her work was first exhibited in New York in 1916, it has been included in hundreds of solo and group exhibitions organized around the world.

Thus, it comes as something of a surprise to discover that at the time of her death in 1986, when she was ninety-eight, O’Keeffe owned more than one-half of the 2,029 known works of her total output.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s collection of her own work was wide ranging in medium, date, subject matter, and quality. She reserved examples of her work that document her career from start to finish and stand as a testament to the complexity of her achievement.

She retained works that defined her as an artist who worked on canvas or board – for which she was best known during her lifetime – and also as an artist who worked on paper supports, for which has become increasingly well know since her death.

She made New Mexico her permanent home in 1949, three years after Alfred Stieglitz’s death, and continued working in oil until the mid–1970s.  She worked in pencil and watercolor until 1982 and produced objects in clay from the mid-1970s until two years before her death in 1986, at the age of 98.

"I have but one desire as a painter – that is to paint what I see, as I see it, in my own way, without regard for the desires or taste of the professional dealer or the professional collector."-  Georgia O’Keeffe.

Before his ferocious ascent to Hollywood new-guard and celebrated psychotic, a young Dennis Hopper kept the flame guttering through photography.  Parties, bar rooms, film sets, diners, bull fights, friends, artists, riots, bikers, the backrooms of celebrity – through the blizzard of the sixites Hopper was never without his camera. “I never made a cent from these photos” he said. “They cost me money but kept me alive … They were the only creative outlet I had for these years until Easy Rider. (After that) … I never carried a camera again.”

But when his then-wife Brooke Hayward gave him a 35mm Nikon camera for his birthday in 1961, he dedicated himself “like an alcoholic”. Along with the film icons and rock stars, Hopper’s exceptional work captures many watershed moments of the 1960s, such as Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March, as well as the Sunset Strip curfew riots and Monterey Pop Festival. “I wanted to document something. I wanted to leave something that I thought would be a record …whether it was Martin Luther King, the hippies, or whether it was the artist”.

Hopper recalled that it was Marlon Brando who got him involved in one of the most volatile events – the Selma-to-Montgomery March. “He pulled up in his car and said, ‘What are you doing day after tomorrow?’ and I said, ‘Nothing,’ and he said, ‘You want to go to Selma?’ and I said, ‘Sure, man. Thanks for asking me.’ [Then at the march, police] dogs were biting, and people were being bombed, and it was like, ‘Where are we?”

Before The Last Movie’s release, Hopper wrote and appeared in an autobiographical documentary, The American Dreamer (1971), which showed him editing The Last Movie at his home in Taos, New Mexico, spouting hippy philosophy, taking baths with women and shooting guns. In the same year, a raving, naked, drug-fuelled Hopper was arrested while running around Los Alamos, New Mexico. This sealed his reputation as the most flipped-out man in the movies, and he spent the next 15 years in foreign films, personal projects, and low-budget arthouse or exploitation movies.”

But his photos remain a tribute to Hopper’s lucid eye, brilliantly capturing the moods behind the moments. He is today also remembered as an accomplished painter and sculptor, and a well-connected personality on the American art scene.

“I didn’t use a light meter; I just read the light off my hands. So the light varies, and there are some dark images. Also, I’m sort of a nervous person with the camera, so I will just shoot arbitrarily until I can focus and compose something, and then I make a shot. So generally, in those proof sheets, there are only three or four really concentrated efforts to take a photograph. It’s not like a professional kind of person who sets it up so every photograph looks really cool.” (Dennis Hopper).

Shortly before Hopper passed away in 2010, Viggo Mortensen called his friend of 20 years “a complete and fertile artist” who was “a constant source of ideas, inspiration and humour for his friends and colleagues”. Since his death Hopper’s photos have been exhibited extensively around the world, and his work beautifully presented in "Taschen’s ‘Dennis Hopper: Photographs 1961-1967".

Read More and See More of Dennis Hopper's Photos at the source: From The Barrelhouse
Images: © The Dennis Hopper Trust.

Video 2:10. Fabulous video from TaosWebb.

For nearly 200 years Saint Francis de Asis Church has stood at the heart and cultural and spiritual lives of Taos.

It's a masterpiece of vernacular architecture. and not surprisingly, has attracted the attention of thousands of artists over the last century.

In fact, it's reputed to be the most often painted and photographed religious structure in the US.

The early Taos painters were captivated by the church, among them Ernest Blumenshien who painted his Church at Ranchos de Taos in 1917.

World famous artists have painted it - John Marin in 1930. And Georgia O'Keefe the same year.

As O'Keefe said, "Artists who spend any time in Taos have to paint it."

St Francis de Asis Church

Video 3min 16sec. Rare footage recently archived of Taos Pueblo 100 years ago.

In Taos, one ventures into an artist's paradise - a strange place of picturesque people.

Types and customs of the race furnish inspiration for Walter Ufer, who is at work on his painting "The Solemn Pledge."

Here also, we find Ernest Blumenschein depicting on canvas "An Old Indian Philosopher" whose portrait is to adorn the National Academy of Design in New York.

Taos is a town of cliff dwellers, rich in every detail of antiquity.

Ernest Blumenschein is one of the founders of the Artist Society in Taos, New Mexico.