With a Push from Spielberg, Artist Titus Kaphar Painted His Life on Screen in ‘Exhibiting Forgiveness’ (original) (raw)

When artist Titus Kaphar began grappling with his anguished childhood, inspiration came from an unexpected source. A few years ago, actress Kate Capshaw, a portrait painter and collector, paid a visit to his studio. At the time, he was working on a series of large-scale canvases that would constitute Exhibiting Forgiveness, his new show at Gagosian in Beverly Hills through Nov. 2. Looking around at the nostalgic images of his childhood, often employing deconstructive techniques of cutting out figures, Capshaw asked what the paintings were about. That’s when Kaphar handed her an autobiographical screenplay with the same title.

“She read it and called me and said, ‘Do you mind if I show this to Steven?’ She was referring to her husband, Steven Spielberg,” Kaphar recalls. “A few days later she called back and said, ‘He wants to talk to you.’ Kaphar — whose 2022 documentary short, Shut Up and Paint, was shortlisted for the best documentary short Oscar — was stunned.

Kaphar recalls Spielberg saying, “I just did a movie about my family [_The Fabelmans_], and this is going to be an intense experience for you. I cried every day while I was shooting that film. Shooting this film is not going to fix your past, so don’t do that to yourself. But I want you to protect yourself from what Hollywood does to films like this.”

Kaphar’s feature debut, Exhibiting Forgiveness, stars André Holland as Tarrell, a stand-in for the artist, as well as John Earl Jelks, Andra Day and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. In theaters Oct. 18 following a Sundance run earlier this year, the movie jumps back and forth in time, between the present day — when Tarrell is unexpectedly confronted by his estranged father, a former addict — to his childhood and the source of their estrangement. In her review, _THR_‘s critic Lovia Gyarkye called the film “A harmonious match of actor and director.”

“The paintings were made for me to process my experience, the things I was going through,” Kaphar recalls. “I started by sitting down and writing in the morning about memory and things I went through with my father. And as I did, images came to me. I did it cause I needed to speak to my sons about my experience as a child. There was a revelation for me that came from the process, that painting is a cathartic process for me.”

Kaphar never thought about a career in art as a kid growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, until he took an art history course in junior college. An auto-didact, he learned to paint by visiting museums. He earned his BFA from San José State University, graduating in 2001, and went on to Yale University, where he received his MFA. A close friend at Yale was Moonlight screenwriter and Geffen Playhouse artistic director Tarell McCraney, the namesake of Holland’s character in the film. Today, Kaphar lives in New Haven with his wife and two teenage sons.

“I hear you in my head” by Titus Kaphar. Titus Kaphar; Owen Conway; Courtesy Gagosian

His work is part of the permanent collection at Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Seattle Art Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Mississippi Museum of Art, New Britain Museum of American Art and University of Michigan Museum of Art. In 2006 he was artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem and in 2018 was named a MacArthur Fellow.

“I don’t come from this world,” Kaphar says, looking around at the gallery as his show was being installed. “I come from poor folks who just worked their asses off and taught me a work ethic. So, when I came into the art world, I found myself confused of the goings on. And I found myself very uncomfortable with some of the engagement with me as a person.”

It’s a dilemma dramatized in the film when, at a gallery opening, Tarrell tells off a presumptuous collector. “I have had those kinds of confrontations with collectors where it’s like, ‘This is my life, this is for real. I understand this is something you’re going to buy, and it’s in the marketplace and I accept that, it’s a choice. I’m blessed to be able to make a living from my paintings, but I need you to know that this for me is not a commercial exercise,” he recalls with a shudder. “But there are collectors who are not just buyers. The surprising thing is there are actually some rich white guys who actually do get it. I can tell you get it from our conversation, and you’re not sitting in front of me trying to prove that you get it.”

Currently, Kaphar and his producing partner, Michael VQ, are the driving force behind Revolution Ready, a film production company founded in 2021. In addition to Exhibiting Forgiveness, they’ve released two short documentaries to date: I Hold Your Love and Shut up and Paint, which, in addition to making the Oscar shortlist, won best short at the Big Sky Film Festival and the Grand Jury prize at the Boston International Film Festival.

His success has left him grounded, giddy and grateful. “For a kid from Kalamazoo, Michigan, that nobody thinks is a real place, to wind up doing this, I feel really lucky,” he says.