© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Brad Pitt, the A-list Hollywood star who was most recently seen in the 2022 release ‘Bullet Train’, has made his debut as a sculptor at a public art exhibition at the Sara Hilden Art Museum in Tampere, Finland.
Pitt, who is known to spend long hours in his art studio in Los Angeles, is showing his work alongside British artist Thomas Houseago and Australian musician Nick Cave, who too is making his art debut with a ceramics series.
What kind of sculpting does Brad Pitt do?
The exhibition in Finland features nine works by the actor, including his first sculpture, made in 2017, titled ‘House A Go Go’, a 46-cm-tall miniature house made from timber. Another work, ‘Aiming At You I Saw Me But It Was Too Late This Time’, a moulded plaster panel depicts a gunfight among eight figures “cast using multiple impressions of the human body”, according to the website of the museum.
“(There are also) a series of plinth-mounted, house shaped sculptures molded in clear silicone that each have been shot with a different gauge of ammunition, revealing its trajectory and freeze framing the destructive motion,” the museum has said.
And what does the actor himself say about his art?
Speaking at the exhibition to the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yleisradio Oy, Pitt himself said his art was a product of “self-reflection”, including over his relationships and where he went wrong in them.
“To me it’s about self-reflection. It’s about where I have gotten it wrong in my relationships, where have I misstepped, where am I complicit… For me, it was born out of ownership of what I call a radical inventory of self, getting really brutally honest with me and taking account of those I may have hurt, moments I have just gotten wrong,” he said.
Everyone knows Pitt as a Hollywood superstar; when did he start sculpture?
Not just sculpture, the actor has reportedly also taken painting lessons from Belfast artist Colin Davidson. He began pursuing pottery after his separation from Angelina Jolie in 2016, and has been spending a lot of time in his studio in Los Angeles, where he is believed to have been experimenting with various mediums. He also once invited co-actor Leonardo DiCaprio to bond over pottery.
In an interview to GQ magazine in June 2022, speaking about his passion for art, Pitt said, “Everything I read, porcelain’s about being thin so that light penetrates, the thinner you get. It’s a cardinal sin to make it thick.” Ceramics, he said, isn’t an art form, but a “solo, very quiet, very tactile kind of sport”.
Isn’t he also a major collector of art?
The art collection that was divided between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt after their divorce, was valued at more than $25 million by research firm Wealth-X. It included several works by the acclaimed British street artist Banksy, a photograph by American photographer Danny Lyon, who chronicled the Civil Rights Movement, several works of the British-born, Los Angeles-based artist Thomas Houseago, and works of Canadian artist Marcel Dzama (who was also one of the highlights at the 2020 India Art Fair in New Delhi).
Pitt is also known to have owned canvases of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill — one of which that he had gifted to Jolie fetched £8.3 million ($11.5 million) at an auction in 2021.
