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Hoppy Serves a Writ
Artist
Ed Blackburn
(Born 1940, United States, died 2022, United States)
Date1982
MediumAcrylic on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 61 7/8 x 83 3/4 in. (157.16 x 212.73 cm)
Framed: 62 3/4 x 84 3/8 x 2 1/4 in. (159.39 x 214.31 x 5.72 cm)
Framed: 62 3/4 x 84 3/8 x 2 1/4 in. (159.39 x 214.31 x 5.72 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of the Director's Council, 1992
Object number1992.1
Status
Not on viewSignedverso, in gray acrylic, l.r.c., " "Hoppy Serves / a Writ" / Blackburn / 82"
Copyright© Ed Blackburn
Category
Label TextEd Blackburn began producing paintings incorporating photographs from newspapers, magazines, and film stills in 1971. The opportunity to create a new body of work for a 1982 exhibition at the Modern (then known as the Fort Worth Art Museum) triggered his series of paintings based on film stills from B-movie Westerns. Hoppy Serves a Writ takes as its source a black-and-white film still from the 1943 movie of the same title, showing the cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy (played by William Boyd) and a member of the villainous Jordan Brothers Gang (Victor Jory) clutching each other during a barroom scuffle.
Blackburn replicated the original’s composition and monochromatic nature but dramatically enlarged the image and rendered the subject with an expressionistic network of flickering white brushstrokes. The animated paint handling conveys the intensity of the struggle between the two characters and also registers the artist’s presence, thus reminding the viewer that Hoppy Serves a Writ is first and foremost a painting. The complex and contradictory relationship between painting and narrative also intrigued Blackburn. In the work, the artist strove to achieve pictorial integrity, to contradict the image’s implied narrative and refocus attention on the painting.
Blackburn’s choice of a photograph derived from a Western B-movie implies a degree of nostalgia. At the same time, he conceived the work as entering into the tradition of figurative painting addressing the human condition. The picture elevates the movie still to the scale of history painting, a mode that, from the Renaissance into the nineteenth century, represented the moral and ethical dimensions and consequences of human stories. Blackburn’s large-scale, close-up view of two human bodies in struggle evokes deep-seated American myths of the Wild West, rugged individualism, and good versus evil. A seemingly simple image appropriated from popular culture, Hoppy Serves a Writ is a work about photography, movies, and American identity. Ultimately, though, it is about painting.
Blackburn replicated the original’s composition and monochromatic nature but dramatically enlarged the image and rendered the subject with an expressionistic network of flickering white brushstrokes. The animated paint handling conveys the intensity of the struggle between the two characters and also registers the artist’s presence, thus reminding the viewer that Hoppy Serves a Writ is first and foremost a painting. The complex and contradictory relationship between painting and narrative also intrigued Blackburn. In the work, the artist strove to achieve pictorial integrity, to contradict the image’s implied narrative and refocus attention on the painting.
Blackburn’s choice of a photograph derived from a Western B-movie implies a degree of nostalgia. At the same time, he conceived the work as entering into the tradition of figurative painting addressing the human condition. The picture elevates the movie still to the scale of history painting, a mode that, from the Renaissance into the nineteenth century, represented the moral and ethical dimensions and consequences of human stories. Blackburn’s large-scale, close-up view of two human bodies in struggle evokes deep-seated American myths of the Wild West, rugged individualism, and good versus evil. A seemingly simple image appropriated from popular culture, Hoppy Serves a Writ is a work about photography, movies, and American identity. Ultimately, though, it is about painting.