I am not driven to make a work about the sublime or the beautiful.There are many reasons for this. An artist's life can be extremely contemplative, introspective. This condition seems to create a secret alliance that makes dark content more accessible, more intriguing. I would be suspicious talking to a happy artist.
-Dennis Oppenheim, 1997
As Germano Celant says, "it is important to understand the roots of an artist from as early as possible."
Dennis Oppenheim is one of the most dynamic contemporary artists of our time. He was born in 1938 in Electric City, Washington.
Dennis Oppenheim grew up during the 1940s in a suburban area of California, which was rather conformist. He feels, however, that he had a good home for becoming an artist. His mother was an American, and was very interested in music, poetry, art and literature. His father was from Russia, born in China, and an engineer. His parents created the atmosphere for academic achievement, although he was not terribly involved in that direction. As an engineer, his father tried to teach Dennis mathematics from age ten and on, and failed miserably. Dennis realized that he did not have the capacity for technical achievement and exactitude, that he seemed to operate in a "soft zone" of visual art. This failure in mathematics and science may have broadened his entry into art. He accepted the fact the science was difficult and eventually rejected it as a possibility.
As a child, he developed an interest in making things from a very early age. He also found himself capable of being alone. Unknown to him, he was probably displaying the basic characteristics of someone in a creative profession. Sometimes, he was withdrawn, although in the community there was a great urge from the outside to conform to his peers, to the conventions that existed during that prelude to the 1950s.
As an adolescent, Abstract Expresssionism was the mosts prominent art movement was extremely potent in the mind of Dennis Oppenheim. A de Kooning was remarkably seductive to him in his late teens. Dennis was drawn to the sheer sort of anti-painting he did, how he would push the brush across the canvas backward and create this extraordinary visual modulation. Still untrained and unsophisticated, Dennis read a visual phenomenon without even having a vocabulary. Abstract Expressionism surrounded Dennis Oppenheim during the late 1950s, close to when he entered college in 1958.
Since no museums existed in Electric City, Dennis felt that this city didn't exist culturally speaking. This lead to his trouble with museums, especially historical museums. As odd as it might sound, Dennis claims that a museum is not a place he is dying to visit in any city. Underneath that difficulty is the realization that his interest in art is an art that is yet to be made.
MeLinDa GonZaLeS.
Copyright © 2001 by University of North Texas. All rights reserved.
Revised: 27 Aug 2001 09:35:13 -0500
Dennis discusses art with students from KCAL
Grand Arts Installation, 2000
My interest in art
is an art that
is yet to be made.
Upper Cut, 1992
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