Email this article

Dennis Hopper and Friends

A fateful turn takes the Easy Rider actor into Taos and the artist onto Main Street

story and photos by Amy Maestas

Found in: | Inside | Art |

Taos, 1969. Bill Whaley, publisher of The Horse Fly newspaper explained it succinctly: "Some of us were here in the '60s but don't remember it at all." Lucky for the rest of us, what Whaley and other Taos residents of the time did is well documented - then and now.
The most famous piece of documentation is the counterculture film Easy Rider. Much of the film, which was made in 1969, was made in and around Taos. Now, 40 years later, the tiny northern New Mexico town is celebrating the ground-breaking film with more than 300 events throughout the summer. And to usher in the celebration is new "mayor" Dennis Hopper.
Whaley explained Taos in 1969 as a friendly and tolerant place. "People got to know each other personally - then and now. There was a lot of tolerance if you didn't cross certain line," Whaley said.
The real test came when Dennis Hopper, just a young and budding Hollywood actor, drove into Taos quite by accident. Hopper and producer Paul Lewis left Farmington, N.M., heading to someplace unknown in the state. As Hopper tells it, the men reached Espanola and Lewis turned to him and asked, "Which way do you want to go? Left take us to Santa Fe and right takes us to Taos." Hopper said it didn't matter, so Lewis turned left. The two quickly learned Lewis had the direction wrong, and they cruised into the plaza in Taos.
"We arrived right in the center and when we got out of our car, an Indian said to us, ?The mountain is smiling on you,'" Hopper said.
Taos Mountain looms in the background of the small town. Locals refer to it often as sacred, and they use it as a gauge of whether it welcomes someone to the town. "The mountain accepted me a long time ago," Hopper said. "It's just not easy to stay here."
Hopper stayed in Taos off and on over the years. He bought salon hostess, writer and art patroness Mabel Dodge Luhan's house after she died. Hopper said he bought the home fully furnished and intended to turn it into a film studio. That never fully happened. But his time in Taos during filming Easy Rider and since has fed Hopper's soul as an artist.
The centerpiece of the Summer of Love celebration is the exhibit "Dennis Hopper and Friends" at the Harwood Museum. During recent press events, Hopper focused more on the exhibit than he did the making of Easy Rider. To Taos Mayor Darren Cordova, Hopper the artist is an "artistic visionary."
The exhibit features the work of Hopper and his curates Larry Bell, Ron Cooper, Ronald Davis, Ken Price and Robert Dean Stockwell. The artists came to Taos from Los Angeles, looking for an inspirational place to create their art and get support from each other. In the 1960s, the men often lived in the same neighborhoods. As Hopper spent time in Taos, he befriended the men and has kept a relationship with them since.
Though Hopper says he considers himself an actor first - simply because that's how he makes his money - his black-and-white photography from 1961-67 in Los Angeles is representative of the time in which they were taken. His pieces at the Harwood also include collages and abstracts. His fine eye as a collector for '60s-era art is what helped bring his curates to be part of the Harwood show. That and the fact that the men share a common thread.
"Humor was the bonding agent, a great pacifier of unexplained differences," said painter Bell. "The art in this show was done by artists with a lot of soul but not so much intellect. These pieces grew out of all kinds of different emotional images to satisfy certain needs."
Apart from the exhibit, Hopper says Taos' celebration of Easy Rider is important to understand its cultural messages - ones seen slightly in his early photography work.
"A lot of Easy Rider is what was happening politically in a Mother Goose kind of way. It's like all kinds of art. I really believe art is 98 percent accident, 1 percent intellect and 1 percent logic," Hopper said.

Amy Maestas is a contributing editor of Inside/Outside Southwest magazine.