News: Dennis Hopper’s Art Goes to Auction

The late, great, actor Dennis Hopper will always primarily be known for his stunning rolls in such films as Easy Rider and Apocalypse Now but one of the lesser known facts about Hopper was that he was one of the greatest contemporary art collectors in the world, with a collection of hundreds of works that included Warhols and Lichtensteins and amounted to millions of dollars .
 
Not only was Hopper a great collector, he was also friends with many of the artists whom hung on his walls, including Andy Warhol, whose painting of Mao Zedong Hopper famously shot two bullet holes into after being frightened by the image in the middle of the night. Warhol declared the bullet holes to be a collaboration with Hopper and put an annotation on the marks, labeling them “warning shot” and “bullet hole.”
 
In May of last year, Hopper died from prostate cancer and his four children are now putting up his vast collection for auction at Christie’s next week, saying that it was their father’s intent for them to sell the works instead of trying to split them up. Bruce Conner’s Picnic on the Grass and Warhol’s Mao are expected to bring the biggest sales, between $20,000 to $30,000.