The exhibit was put together by artist and friend, Julian Schnabel, and by Dennis Hopper himself before his death on May 29th of prostate cancer. (Schnabel directed Hopper in "Basquiat" as a successful art collector, which in fact was what he also was. (There will be an auction of Hopper's art collection at Christie's in New York on November 10th and 11th.)

Vito Schnabel, son of curator Julian, told me he was playing golf with Hopper when he hit his only ever hole-in-one. It took place a few years ago. He hit another hole-in-one with this exhibit.

Hopper was a conduit for collaboration between artists, actors, writers and musicians. His first wife, Brooke, gave him a camera, and he never stopped photographing: amusing portraits of friends, historic moments (Martin Luther King's march on Selma, Alabama), observant city-scapes ("Double Standard" for which the exhibit was named).

Hopper began painting at the age of nine when still living in Dodge City, Kansas, and continued all his life. His early paintings were impressionistic, but a fire in BelAir destroyed more than three hundred of these. Thereafter he put together abstract paintings and larger than life sculptures. As an actor and director, his work was solid, but as a visual artist, except for his photography, I found his work to be uneven. His photograph of a very young Andy Warhol with a flower in front of his face was striking, whereas some of his sculptures, such as a chain link fence with an old tire leaning against it, I found puzzling and ultimately ... dull.