Emily Mack
Ok, so let’s review: Brad Pitt is hot. Obviously. He can act. He can produce. He can rock a skirt. And, apparently, he can sculpt with real finesse. An exhibition of his work in Finland is earning rave reviews — from established art critics!
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Brad Pitt’s Artistic Pursuits
In a recent, illuminating interview with GQ, Brad Pitt revealed he was entering the “last leg of his career.” But what does that really mean? Based on his conversation with author Ottessa Moshfegh, Pitt is not retiring. Rather, he’s pursuing other avenues for his creative spirit.
His production company, Plan B, is slatedfor a number of big releases, including Women Talking, Americanah, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Pitt himself is starring in the summer blockbuster Bullet Train. Another highly anticipated project of his, Babylon, will premier on Christmas.
So it does not exactly seem like he’s slowing down. And yet, in the interview, Pitt expressed deeper desires. “I’m one of those creatures that speaks through art,” he said in the piece. “I just want to always make. If I’m not making, I’m dying in some way.”
So now, he’s surviving with sculptures.
The Finnish Exhibit
This week, Brad Pitt made his art world debut at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, Finland. Teaming up with celebrity friends, musician Nick Cave and established sculptor Thomas Houseago, for a group show, naturally, the exhibit has buzz.
But Pitt’s works are particularly notable.
He produced a total of nine works for the show which range from a miniature, cobbled-together house to larger-scaled works like Aiming at You I saw Me But It Was Too Late This Time. It’s that piece — a sort-of fractured Mexican standoff, frozen, in a frieze — that’s gaining the most attention. Grafting modern gun violence onto such an antiquated form, the huge sculpture invites viewers to contemplate on the graphic brutality that’s present, not only in our constant news, but throughout the films of its famous maker.
As the Guardian critic Jonathon Jones writes in his aptly-titled review, “Shockingly, Brad Pitt turns out to be a very fine sculptor,” “Pinch me – I must be dreaming. Brad Pitt is an extremely impressive artist.” Jones also connects the ethos behind Aiming at You I saw Me But It Was Too Late This Time to another piece of Pitt’s, a bronze coffin decorated with body parts. “Here the violence of his neoclassical frieze has gone a stage further,” Jones says. “No complete standing people remain, just pieces of them. The coffin is a fairly stark image. But far from just being deathly, there is something redemptive about its golden glow and funereal dignity.” Comparing it to the work of Paul Gaugin — Gaugin! — he concludes: “This is a healing box, a coffin from which you could rise again, like someone in recovery.”
Jones is right, it seems, in relating Pitt’s work directly to themes of recovery. Since divorcing Angelina Jolie, Pitt’s life has once again become tabloid fodder. And he’s been open about struggling with alcoholism and his mental health. In the GQ interview, Pitt hesitated to call himself an “artist.” But he explicitly describes the art-making process as one that is integral to his personal journey.
Though he refers to ceramics — a favorite pastime of his — as a “solo, very quiet, very tactile kind of sport,” he acknowledged the greater feeling of connection that comes with it. “Art is something inexplicable,” Pitt said. “Art is something that gives you goose bumps, that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, that brings a tear to the eye. Maybe it’s because someone understood before you, you’re not alone.”
Pitt even described the near-religious experience of viewing a work by Los Angeles artist Charles Ray: a cross-less, untethered Christ formed from molding wet paper mulch. Clearly, Pitt is inspired by the medium of sculpture. He is inspired by today’s working sculptors and, with his exhibition, is making a meaningful entrance into their world.
