Curt Hoppe, Downtown Portraits 2010 – 2019, Howl Happening: An Arturo Vega Project, 96-Page Catalogue, 2019
$60
Includes all 25 of Hoppe’s larger than life painted portraits; and all of the 126 people that he made photographs of; with essays by Marc H Miller, Carlo McCormick, and Walter Robinson.
“Hoppe’s project is a nostalgic return to a time when he first discovered his own creative direction and became part of the downtown art community. He celebrates his subjects not in their past, youthful glory, but as they look today, closer to the end than the beginning. Like Hoppe himself, they are survivors.” — Marc H Miller
“Curt Hoppe seems to have eschewed the common practice of wooing the wealthy and painting pretty pictures for their posterity. In fact it is likely that most of his subjects could not even afford the paint and canvas, let alone the consummate skills that Hoppe invests in his pictures of them” — Carlo McCormick
“Masterfully done with an airbrush, typically an illustrator’s tool, in continuous tones of black, white, and gray, the paintings are enlargements of photographs the artist takes in his Bowery studio. Though admittedly inspired by photorealism (he’s closely studied early Chuck Close and observed Jerry Ott at work) Hoppe rejects the classification, I think because his pictorial exactitude is inspired by real life rather than the shiny surface of photo emulsion” — Walter Robinson
Size: 8.25 x 10 inches
