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We often scrutinize an artist’s work, searching for autobiographical clues. But in Titus Kaphar’s recent paintings, and in his new film, “Exhibiting Forgiveness,” such close reading is unnecessary. His life experience is laid bare, in all its poignant and — sometimes agonizing — pain.
The paintings, now on view at Gagosian in Beverly Hills, Calif., through Nov. 2, figure prominently in the film, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and will have its theatrical release nationally on Oct. 18. The movie, Kaphar’s first feature, tells the story of a young painter reuniting with his estranged father — a recovering addict — even as he also deals with the final days of his ailing mother.
This foray into Hollywood — Oprah Winfrey and Serena Williams were among those who attended the Sept. 12 Los Angeles premiere — only cements celebrity status for Kaphar, 48, who, in the last decade, has won a MacArthur “genius award,” helped found the New Haven art incubator and fellowship program NXTHVN, created Time magazine covers about Ferguson protesters and the killing of George Floyd and seen his work collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney. His paintings of sorrowful mothers evoke classical pietas.
The two-hour film — which Kaphar wrote and directed — gave him a way to experiment with another art form, one that can reach well beyond the number of people likely to see his paintings. It also represents a significant filmmaking step from Kaphar’s documentary shorts “Shut Up and Paint” (2022), which was shortlisted for an Oscar and addressed the art market’s stifling of social activism, and “The Jerome Project” (2016), which began to explore the artist’s relationship with his father.
But perhaps most importantly, the movie is Kaphar’s message to his two teenage boys. “I was trying to figure out how to help my sons understand how different my life is from their lives and why I’m so protective of them — why I adore them the way that I do, why I insist that I give them a hug and a kiss in the morning,” said Kaphar, wearing a cap and sweatshirt in a recent interview at his New Haven studio. “I still put them into bed, kiss them on their foreheads.
“This is the back story,” he tells them. “You guys have been asking me, and I keep saying, ‘When you’re older, when you’re older, when you’re older.’ Okay, I’m a storyteller, let me tell you the story.”
He began as if by writing them a letter — along the lines of James Baldwin’s 1962 “Letter to My Nephew,” Kaphar said, which imagined his nephew’s future in a historically racist country — but then it began to take the shape of a script.
The paintings and the film developed in tandem. Kaphar would wake up to write at 5 a.m., drive his children to school, then come to his studio and listen to what he’d written via an app on his phone. “Images were coming to me,” he said. By the time he finished the script, he had also finished a whole slew of paintings, “so they evolved together.”
Having received a studio visit from the actress Kate Capshaw — herself an artist — Kaphar gave his script to her, and she shared it with her husband, the director Steven Spielberg. Spielberg, who had just completed his own autobiographical film, “The Fabelmans,” reached out to Kaphar by phone.
“He talked about how he had just finished a script about his own family and how challenging that was for him,” Kaphar recalled. “He was encouraging me to protect myself in this process. He was saying, ‘It’s going to be incredibly emotional, and I just want you to know it’s not going to fix everything.’”
Kaphar’s guidance in feature filmmaking came from two of his producers, Derek Cianfrance and Stephanie Allain, he said. Allain, who has worked with filmmakers like John Singleton, said Kaphar approached the process with humility and curiosity, while “knowing unequivocally what he wanted.”
Kaphar was also fortunate to be able to cast the top-flight actors he most desired: André Holland, John Earl Jelks, Andra Day and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
Holland, known for his performances in movies like “Moonlight” and in plays like August Wilson’s “Jitney,” said that Kaphar “wasn’t afraid about what he didn’t know.”
Kaphar insisted that Holland learn how to paint to get a real feel for it — although Kaphar would step in to do the actual brush strokes in the film. “He made it feel not so precious,” Holland said. “‘All right, let’s put some paint on canvas.’
“There are a lot of similarities between that practice and my own,” the actor continued, “the amount of focus that it takes and the amount of discipline that it takes. And there is always the opportunity to revise.”
Kaphar said he was surprised by how much he liked the collaborative nature of the medium. “I can just go downstairs and make a painting. I don’t need anybody,” he said. “You can’t do that with film. It’s necessarily a community activity.”
“Exhibiting Forgiveness” isn’t strictly autobiographical — the mother dies in the movie, for example, whereas Kaphar’s mother is still living. But much of the film hits close to home.
Born in Kalamazoo, Mich., Kaphar was raised by a strong mother; his father was in and out of prison. (He is no longer incarcerated and is aware of — but has not seen — the film, the artist said. Efforts to reach Kaphar’s father for comment were unsuccessful.)
Kaphar struggled in school, but signed up for an art survey course at a junior college to impress the woman he ultimately married, Julianne Kaphar, now a nutritionist. He earned his B.F.A. from San Jose State University before completing an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art.
In 2006, Kaphar had a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, an experience he drew on in creating NXTHVN with Jason Price in two former factory buildings reimagined by Deborah Berke, the dean of the Yale School of Architecture.
In his art practice, Kaphar gained attention for subverting images from American and European traditions, cutting them into his canvases, creating his own version of works by artists like Diego Velázquez and Jacques-Louis David.
“He’s an artist who is always tying his practice to ideas of history,” said Thelma Golden, director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, “but also responding to the history that’s being made now.”
Kaphar’s “Jerome Project,” shown at the Studio Museum in 2014, consists of a series of devotional portraits of 65 Jeromes in Byzantine-style gold leaf, with each partly submerged in tar. The project is based on mug shots of dozens of Black incarcerated men who share the first and last name of his father, Jerome.
The paintings in his current show — a boy popping a wheelie or pushing a lawn mower up the hill — depict bucolic scenes in highly saturated color that are sometimes punctuated by the harsh white of excised bodies.
Knowing how intimidating an art gallery can be for the uninitiated, Kaphar succeeded in lobbying for the construction of an actual 90-seat theater at Gagosian, so that people can watch his two-hour film and see his paintings immediately after.
“Having the experience in the film and then walking into the space, you know everything you need to know to be able to engage with the artwork,” he said. “Hopefully that experience is empowering.”
What perhaps matters most to the artist is the searing takeaway of the film, which is that forgiveness is not always pat or possible, a message brought home toward the end in the words of Tarrell — Kaphar’s alter ego.
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