My first awareness of the artist Titus Kaphar is learning about his provocative painting, “Behind the Myth of Benevolence” (2014). In it, Rembrandt Peale’s famous portrait of Thomas Jefferson is ripped back to partially reveal a woman representing Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s enslaved and assumed mistress and mother to six children the third U.S. president allegedly fathered.
Much of Kaphar’s art deals with the deconstruction and reassembly of American history, exposing secrets and lies and hypocrisies in a stunning conceptual conceit. Here in Alabama, his work may be viewed at the Birmingham Museum of Art and at Montgomery’s Legacy Museum of the Equal Justice Initiative.
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When I taught directing classes, I stressed how directing for stage and, especially film, is a visual medium. If an audience gathers to watch a show, it is the director’s job to give them something to watch and not just listen. A major part of telling the story is delivering the visual cues. So it always interests me when artists from another visual medium make a film. The films of painter Julian Schnabel are always fascinating to watch, especially for their visual intensity (Basquiat, Before Night Falls, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). Similarly, I admire films directed by fashion designer Tom Ford for their crisp visual discipline and precise characterizations (A Single Man, Nocturnal Animals). In each, the artist makes the film an extension of his visual aesthetic.
Which brings me back to Titus Kaphar and his powerful directing debut, Exhibiting Forgiveness. The film, from a script by Kaphar, is intensely personal, clearly biographical, and an offshoot of “The Jerome Project,” a documentary about Kaphar’s strained relationship with his father. Exhibiting Forgiveness tells of an artist on the rise as he is pulled back into a traumatic past that he never really left.
André Holland plays the artist, Tarrell, living an idyllic-seeming life with his musician wife, Aisha (Andra Day), and their impossibly adorable young son, Jermaine (Daniel Michael Barriere). André and Aisha take “turns” attending to their art and the scenes of their domestic life are calm and blissful. We spend time in Tarrell’s home studio and are privileged to see his art and technique take form through Holland’s sensitive and deft performance.
It is during a visit to Tarrell’s mother’s house that the artist is forced to face his recovering addict father. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, as the mother, Joyce, delivers a delicate performance as a forgiving and deeply religious woman trying to forge a reconciliation with the son and the father who abused him. John Earl Jelks is La’Ron, the father who has worked tirelessly all his life, acted destructively toward his family, and been given too many second chances. Ian Foreman as Young Tarrell also merits a mention. His scenes are primarily flashbacks and few moments are as moving as the look on his face as he is forced to cut the grass after an intense injury to his foot.
Kaphar’s script gives each principal scenes in which they can shine in performances that illuminate and enhance the film. As the film goes on, it becomes clear that there are no true villains here; each reacts to victimhood in their own way.
Kaphar’s haunting and evocative large-scale paintings are featured throughout the film, illuminating the memories that haunt Tarrell. The cinematographer Lachlan Milne has captured the film in ways that emulate Kaphar’s art. The urban landscapes lend authenticity and memory to the film’s lush images. A scene at a gallery opening captures the artist’s frustration at having his privacy violated after a volatile encounter. It is a rewarding movie to watch.
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In 2018, at the height of the movement to remove Confederate statues, I heard an interview with Titus Kaphar and was impressed by his rational response to the conflict. He said:
We’re having a national conversation right now about public monuments. And in this discussion … we have this sort of binary conversation about keeping these sculptures up or taking them down. And I actually think that that binary conversation is problematic. I think there is another possibility, and I think that possibility has to do with bringing in new work that speaks in conversation with this old work. It’s about a willingness to confront a very difficult past.
In Exhibiting Forgiveness, Kaphar confronts a difficult personal past with grace and authority. It is a stunning piece of art.
Professional Southerner 