Budd Hopkins' new book from Anomalist Books.
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The complex life of Budd Hopkins - artist and UFO abduction expert - is reflected in his new book from Anomalist Books - Art, Life and UFOs.
The painter-sculptor became a key figure in the study of alien abductions in the 1980s, and then went on to establish the Intruders Foundation.
Hopkins has written several popular books on the subject, including Missing Time, Sight Unseen: Science, UFO Invisibility and Transgenic Beings (with Carol Rainey), Witnessed, and Intruders (also a 1992 film).
The Wheeling, West Virginia, native, and Oberlin College graduate, has art in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art.
It's most interesting that Hopkins devoted one chapter in the book to his childhood experience during the infamous Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds in 1938. In "The Night of the Martians," Hopkins' own mother and father were drawn into the plot, when they apparently tuned in after the opening identified the radio play as fiction.
Like thousands of other Americans, they feared the broadcast was real. The reaction from Hopkins? He went on to believe "that the hundreds of UFO accounts covered by the media, and the many reports that were officially made to the Air Force, were nothing more than clever, deceptive pranks like The War of the Worlds."
He concludes, "War of the Worlds. Like most Americans, Doctor Orson Welles had inoculated me against the disease of taking UFO reports seriously."
The following is a Budd Hopkins lecture from March 7, 2004.
The following is from Anomalist Books' press release.
Some people know Budd Hopkins as a nationally renowned artist. Others know him as an expert on UFO abductions. But few people realize that these two are actually one and the same person. Now the two worlds – and enormously complex life – of Budd Hopkins are revealed in a fascinating new book, ART, LIFE AND UFOS, just published by Anomalist Books. In this candid memoir, Budd Hopkins, the best-selling author of several UFO books, reveals for the first time a few secrets of his 30 years of UFO research. He not only discusses an important, previously unpublished case that helped him recognize "missing time" as an aspect of UFO abductions, but he also recounts his own curious ties to some of the people involved in the very first UFO report he ever investigated.
But ART, LIFE AND UFOS is much more than another UFO book. It's a heartfelt look back at the remarkable career of Budd Hopkins, the renowned abstract expressionist painter whose works can be found in the collections of the Guggenheim, Whitney, and Metropolitan Museums, as well as Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Hopkins not only explains the development of his work (and how it would eventually reflect his UFO interests) but also describes with keen insight his friendships with senior artists such as Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell, and the importance he finds in their work.
And then there is a life, an unusual one at that. Beginning with his childhood and youth in West Virginia, a period that remains a central theme in this memoir, Hopkins discusses being a victim of polio during the pandemic of the 1930s, his complex relationship with his father, his participation in the famous “Cedar Bar years” of Abstract Expressionism, his adventures evading the attentions of several prominent members in New York’s once closeted gay scene, and his summer life in Cape Cod.
But it is as an expert on UFO abductions that Hopkins is known around the world. He has authored four seminal books on the subject, including Missing Time and The New York Times bestseller Intruders, which was the subject of a CBS miniseries. Among the personal or professional relationships he writes
about are those with the astronomers Carl Sagan and J. Allen Hynek, the philanthropist Laurence Rockefeller, and the Harvard psychiatrist John Mack.
ART, LIFE and UFOs: A Memoir by Budd Hopkins
ISBN: 1933665416
Trade paperback, 438 pages, illustrated
Anomalist Books, $19.95
For more information visit: AnomalistBooks.com
Praise for the UFO books of Budd Hopkins:
"All Mr. Hopkins is asking for in these pages is a hearing, and he deserves
that. His yarn is much too interesting to put down." – The New York Times
"One comes to a tender regard for Hopkins's subjects. Their uniform
similarities of description of their UFO abductions and of the aliens bear a
faithful fact that could sway many an ironclad skeptic."– Kirkus Reviews
"Any reader keeping an open mind is unlikely to dismiss
Hopkins's...contentions out-of-hand." – New York Post
"Hopkins' disarming manner as he leads the reader through the steps of his
research adds credibility to the science fictional aspects of this account."
– Publishers Weekly
The CBS miniseries based on Budd Hopkins' book Intruders "...pleads a
convincing case to the effect that the invasion from outer space is not
fiction but fact." – Houston Chronicle
Praise for the Art of Budd Hopkins:
"One of the year's best shows and one which fills in the blank space after
an unanswered question 'whatever happened to Abstract Expressionism?'” – The New
York Times
“Hopkins blends the bold brushwork of action painting with the clean-cut,
emblematic colors of hard-edged abstraction. The canvases are large, the
spectrum vibrant, the manner authoritative.” – Time
“Hera's Wall has the wide range and the unity of a masterpiece.” – Art in
America
"Hopkins...gets just the right degree of ambiguity into his guardian
figures...and they have both the coiled energy of a human being on the watch
and the density and assurance of color that we ask of geometric abstract
painting. They are the best paintings that Mr. Hopkins has done." – The New York
Times
Comments
Sounds very interesting.
Dear Mr. Marsh,
I am glad Budd Hopkins is getting his due. The man wrote the book on abduction.His diligence in not leading the witnesses in the hypnotic sessions allowed Dr. John Mack to take the subject seriously. I know Budd has been ill and many of us in New York miss the lectures at the Intruders Foundation. Many of us are wondering if they will ever hold lectures again? I hope Budd or his associates will put up some type of message on the Intruders website about its future. Thanks Bud you may me a believer in the abduction phenomenon.
Joe Capp
UFO Media Matters
Non-Commercial Blog
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