Elliot Budd Hopkins (June 15, 1931 – August 21, 2011) He lived with his parents, Elliot B. Hopkins and Eleanor A. Hopkins, brother, Stuart, and sister, Eleanor. At age two, Hopkins contracted polio. which eventually led him to Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in art history in 1953. For a time, Hopkins studied art history at Columbia University and worked a low-level job selling tickets at the Museum of Modern Art. His experimentation with collage techniques and style as an abstract expressionist won him national acclaim.

In 1969, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art acquired Hopkins' Norbeck Yellow Vertical, describing him as "a leading American painter who has successfully brought together the vocabularies of painterly abstraction and hard edge painting." In 1972, Hopkins was among five artists whose work was commissioned as part of a statewide effort to support the creative arts in West Virginia. It was, Governor Arch Moore claimed, "the first project of this kind to be undertaken in the nation." The piece was to be displayed in the state's cultural center located near the Capitol.

In 1976, Hopkins was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for painting.

Exhibits

Hopkins exhibited his paintings and sculptures in museums, galleries such as Andre Zarre, Levis Fine Art and Poindexter (New York) and Jan Cicero (Chicago), and universities throughout the United States.

Hopkins had a major retrospective exhibition at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in mid-2017.

The Whitney Museum, Washington Gallery of Modern Art,

Art style

Hopkins' paintings in the 1960s combined the precise, hard-edge geometric shapes he was enthralled with and drawn to as a child with gestural, atmospheric painting characteristic of second- and later-generation Abstract Expressionists. "I had come to understand that an abstract painting at its most powerful was a kind of aesthetic scrim behind which lurks a concealed, obsessive 'thing' or image of some kind, transformed, made palatable by the artist's mediating skills."

Hopkins viewed collage as an artistic technique and a philosophical, aesthetic means of unifying a disjointed and fragmented world. He saw collage, the assemblage of fragments and varying points of view, in the poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture, and, especially, motion pictures of his day:<blockquote>"Consciously or unconsciously, contemporary artists work to create harmony from distinctly jarring material, forcing warring ideas, materials and spatial systems into a tense and perhaps arbitrary detente. Seen most broadly, the presence of the collage aesthetic is the sole defining quality of modernism in all the arts."</blockquote>

In the 1970s, Hopkins' work included a series of assembled paintings, incorporating architectural elements. Sculptures such as Gallatin's Drive I, White City Hall, New York Wall II and others bore urban names and echoed elements of New York City's skyline. Many of his works during this time featured circular shapes with primary colors set against black and white backgrounds suggestive of Piet Mondrian. Hopkins, Ted Bloecher, then director of New York State's Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), It and other best-sellers on the phenomena, including Whitley Strieber's

Communion (1987), prompted stories of alien abduction by people who read the books. Abductee Linda Cortile had also participated in Hopkins' support group, starting five months before her alleged abduction, and read his book, Intruders. and, like Hopkins' book of the same name, portrayed abduction scenarios. through the publication of his book Intruders.

Hopkins, along with Elizabeth Slater, who conducted psychological tests of abductees, These victims were, reportedly, taken to spaceships, impregnated by extraterrestrials, Once a victim, according to Hopkins, abductees were powerless over the intrusions and susceptible to additional kidnappings, These hallucinations feel real to the person experiencing sleep paralysis and can often be accompanied by sensory features: musty smells, shuffling sounds, visions of ghosts, aliens, and monsters. Groups such as this were reported at the time as the most recent development in UFO-mania. seeing him on television programs such as Will Shriner, Sally Jessy Raphael, the Marsha Warfield Show, Charles Grodin and others. Some critics interpreted these television appearances as a way for Hopkins and other UFO authors such as Whitley Strieber to recruit possible abductees.

Hypnosis

thumb|Hopkins, hypnosis with abductee

Although Hopkins had no formal psychological training,

According to Hopkins, any feeling of uneasiness about a place, or any sense of lost time (that is often accounted for by daydreaming), could be attributed to alien abduction. Hopkins insisted that regressive hypnosis In May 1987, psychologist and hypnotist Martin Reiser appeared on ABC's 20/20 with host Lynn Sherr, an episode that also featured Hopkins and alleged UFO abductees, asserting that there are reasonable explanations for UFO sightings. His belief was that Hopkins pressured his subjects into believing UFOs exist. or indentations of the skin, scars or cuts and abductee claims of implants a sense of paralysis or immobilization while lying in bed or in their cars, and, most especially, a sense of missing or lost time. critics plagued his career with calls for tangible proof, which were never forthcoming: DNA from the hybrid babies, proof of implants that were alluded to (particularly in the case of alleged abductee Linda Cortile) but never recovered, photographs or videotapes of space craft or aliens.

Criticism

Critics of Hopkins' position that on alien abduction accounts had "an absolute core of reality" cautioned that media coverage might, inadvertently, be influencing alleged victims' stories. approached him about seeing a spacecraft that, allegedly, landed in New Jersey's North Hudson Park.

Conspiracy theories of government coverup of UFO sightings and visitations,

Personal life and death

By 1973, Hopkins was married to art critic, art historian, and curator April Kingsley,

Books

  • Art, Life and UFOs: A Memoir (2009)
  • Sight Unseen: Science, UFO Invisibility, and Transgenic Beings (2003), with Carol Rainey
  • Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions (1996)
  • Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods (1987)
  • Sacred Spaces: The Book of Temples/The Book of Guardians/The Book of Altars (1983)
  • Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions (1981)

See also

  • David M. Jacobs
  • Extraterrestrial life
  • Extraterrestrials in fiction
  • John E. Mack
  • List of alleged extraterrestrial beings
  • Grey alien
  • Zeta Reticuli
  • The Manhattan Alien Abduction

References

  • www.intrudersfoundation.org&nbsp;– Intruders Foundation: Budd Hopkins' official site (archived)