Melissa: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. What does it mean to be an artist?

Titus: It means freedom. My name is Titus Kaphar. I'm a painter, filmmaker, artist. I think that I work in a lot of different mediums. I started as a painter specifically and in many ways, I will always see the world through a painter's eyes but artist feels like freedom. It feels like the opportunity to let other folks know I'm going to do it a little bit differently.

Melissa: Titus Kaphar has indeed been doing things differently. The New Haven based visual artist holds numerous coveted awards and recognitions, including a MacArthur Genius Grant and a Time Magazine Cover. In 2017, he completed a painting on stage while delivering his TED Talk. The awards, the grants, the media attention, even the solo exhibitions in the nation's most prestigious spaces, they don't seem to be the point for Titus. Instead, it's the work and the freedom it represents which define him as an artist.

The first time I engaged with your art was the Unseen exhibit at the Smithsonian. Can you just for a moment-- I feel like maybe people have at least seen some reproductions of some of these works, but since it's radio and I can't show a picture, can you describe some of these pieces where you're literally it feels like peeling down the canvas and revealing what is behind? Can you just describe maybe one?

Titus: I think the most well-known if that's the right way to describe it, piece in that exhibition is a painting called Behind the Myth of Benevolence. That painting is actually based on a conversation that I had with an American history teacher. She is a 80-year-old woman who I care for deeply, but we share no political beliefs.

I enjoy having conversations with people that believe differently than me generally. At some point we got into a conversation about Thomas Jefferson. As I said, she's an American history teacher. She taught high school for 40 years. At some point in the conversation she said, "Thomas Jefferson is a benevolent slave owner." That phrase confused me so much that I asked her to explain herself. Long story short, she wasn't able to do that. I left her kitchen table perplexed, confused, upset, and went to the studio where I tend to deal with those kinds of emotions.

I started a painting where on the surface layer you have a Black woman who is clearly sitting in a private space. It's dark, the background is blue, there's a bronze dish with water in it, maybe she's bathing. In front of that is a portrait of Thomas Jefferson that is pushed to the side almost like a curtain being drawn back. Behind this portrait of Thomas Jefferson is this portrait of this Black woman. The conversation in that painting speaks to the this horrific, I say horrific circumstance of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.

Melissa: You as the artist, as the creator in that moment, are you hoping for a particular reaction from those of us who will view it?

Titus: Early on in my practice, it became very clear that I have to find strategies to push out outside voices. I'm not thinking about, forgive me, you or anyone else in the process of making the paintings. When I'm making these decisions, they have to come from an interior place. If they are rooted and trying to be didactic and teach a lesson or something like that, I find that the work that I make from that particular place is not good.

Melissa: I'm trying in part to move us to a place where I think all of us who create anything, whether understood as artists or otherwise, are pushed to believe that our product is good when it receives positive reviews or is well remunerated. I want to know from you how that you've achieved it, that you've swept, that you've created what is good for you.

Titus: Maybe the right approach or the right framing for that is when this object is done with me that is when I know it's good. What I mean by that is there are moments in a painting where you feel like you should keep going, I should keep doing this, I need to add more color there, this needs to happen, so on and so forth. If you are properly engaged in the process of making the thing, the thing should be the conductor. The thing should dictate when it's done and it will tell you, “I am finished with you now.”

Melissa: All right. We're starting to get a little bit to, and undoubtedly, just scratching the surface of your process, of your relationship even with the objects that you're creating. I wonder about the extent which you feel pushed to frame your work as being relevant to the extent that it is relevant to these outside decision makers in the art world.

Titus: Like the story I told you about Behind the Myth of Benevolence, all of this stuff is incredibly personal. It's about getting the thing that is buried inside outside, painting, sculpture, film. When the work goes into the public space, at that point it becomes necessary to let go in a way and let the work show you what it can do in the public sphere. Once it's in the world, then I get to see how other people engage with it. People often say, "What do you want people to think or feel when they experience the work?" I just want them to think and feel.

Melissa: Quick break, but don't go anywhere. I've got more with Titus Kaphar in just a moment. It's The Takeaway

This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and I'm still with Titus Kaphar, artist, and now documentary filmmaker of the recently released short film, Shut Up and Paint.

Titus: The conversation that Black artists have been having is like these things that we make exist in white spaces, in white people's houses and they become separate from us and disconnected from us in a way that just feels not just.

Melissa: Titus and I talked about why he has no plans to stop speaking.

Titus: I recognize that the things that I struggle with, the world sees as political. I recognize that when they see my painting where there are two Black men in the center, and their hands are up, and it's whitewashed, and there's a frantic energy to every brushstroke, I know that people see that and think, “Oh this is about Black Lives Matter.” The reality is that painting is about me and my brother walking down the street of Chelsea and being stopped by police officers with their hands on their guns. While my white collectors walk by, I am now made to look like a criminal when I've done nothing. All of this stuff that can be received as these political act is personal.

The film you're talking about is a short film that was shortlisted for an Oscar but did not get nominated, which is totally fine. There're some really great documentaries out there right now that are talking about some really important stuff and so I'm excited for them. That film was about this conversation that I was having with a particular dealer who was trying to convince me that if I would just stop talking so much about the difficult things for me in terms of the politics of my conversation in interviews, he was specifically- -talking about, that he could sell more of my work. Spoiler alert, my response is why would I do that? Why would I do that? If I make that change, there's really no reason for me to make work anymore because then that's about you, that's really not about me and I'm selfish in my practice. I am selfish. I do this for me.

Melissa: I was going to say, it's also wild, isn't it? It's not like, shut up and paint the wall in my kitchen. How could you create something that isn't speaking?

Titus: Well, here's the thing, in some ways, I'm not surprised by his response. I'm disturbed by it because you, he was supposed to be my representative. For you to say that means you fundamentally do not understand why I make what I make and what it means to me. You cannot represent me anymore. To take this conversation a little bit further, that same person being vague purposely, that same purpose person is suing me, not for the film. He's suing me in order to force a judge to say that I have to sell him my work.

I did an exhibition. We had a bunch of work in the show. They said they couldn't sell everything. They sold all the work except for two, but they were going to keep trying. Long story short, they decided that they wanted to keep those two very best paintings for themselves. For me, this film does become more didactic in a way than a lot of other of my work because it gives me the opportunity to say to the young artists that I mentor, "Hey, don't play with these contracts. Make sure you have a lawyer. Do it right.”

It's unfortunate but the reality is he broke no laws. He broke no laws. Was what he did moral? No, no, it was not. Was it principled? No, no, it was not. But did he break any laws? No, no, he did not.

Melissa: Let's stick with this for a second because on the one hand you talk about being selfish or at least centering yourself in the production of your work and the relationship with your objects. Then you move fairly quickly here to mentor. Talk to me about how you understand mentoring and maybe whether or not you yourself had it and are reproducing it, or if you didn't and are creating it whole cloth.

Titus: Yes, mentorship is incredibly important to me. I started a project called NXTHVN, which is a 45,000-square-foot not-for-profit space in New Haven Connecticut, where we invest in young, Black and brown artists. We give them studio space for a year. We give them a professional development curriculum. We give them $35,000. We give them housing. In that curriculum, we teach them how to manage the business of art because that's not something you really get in school very much.

Most importantly, we help them connect with mentors. Every mentees, every artist in our project has a high school apprentice that they work with. Those high school students come in and get paid to work with these artists, thereby introducing them at a very high level. Mentorship is incredibly important to me.

Melissa: That's not just mentorship. That's resourcing, that's investment. I don't like the, as you pointed just like off the top of your head trite kind of, “What’s your advice for young artists?” but I will ask in that work that you're doing, I'm wondering if there's a grounding that you're willing to share broadly.

Titus: Sure. I think one of the challenges about this moment for young artists is what's good, that question that we were talking about earlier, really becomes determined by the number of likes you have. What you and I just talked about was this idea that maybe what's good has more to do with your relationship to the thing that you are making and when that thing informs you that it's done with you. That you are done with me. You have a lot more to learn but from this particular object, it's time to move on, to set it aside and keep going on to the next one.

I think that what I really focus on with the artist that I'm mentoring is trying to figure out how to hear your own voice. Not my voice, not your professor's voice, not the artist who's doing better than you, not the person on TikTok who makes more money, how do you hear your voice?

Melissa: Titus Kaphar is painter, activist, artist, filmmaker of the new documentary Shut Up and Paint. Titus, thank you for not shutting up.

Titus: Thank you.

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