On a recent morning at the Museum of Modern Art, the cast of the Broadway revival of “Art” — James Corden, Bobby Cannavale and Neil Patrick Harris — stood before Monet’s colossal “Water Lilies” and wondered how creation ends.
“When did Basquiat know when he was done?” Harris asked. “How did he know his work was completed versus not?”
Corden jumped in. “There are loads of work that every artist in here has attempted but gone, ‘No, it’s terrible,’ and ripped it up,” he said. “Every novel had chapters that never made it.”
Cannavale pivoted the conversation to mediums of art, saying that he was more drawn to work that’s “living and breathing,” singling out Marina Abramovic’s physically punishing performances from the 1970s and Yves Klein’s conceptual “invisible art” from the 1950s and early ’60s, in which Klein issued receipts for artworks that didn’t physically exist.
“It was just outrageous,” Cannavale said of Klein’s provocation. “But that is something that only art can provide.”
This may not be the conversation you would expect from three hams known more for comedy than art history. But as they walked through MoMA’s fourth floor galleries, the three men genuinely seemed to know a lot about the art in their midst — at least the art they liked.
(MoMA had agreed to let the actors into its Midtown Manhattan galleries an hour before doors opened to the public in order to accommodate their schedules.)
Dressed in understated sportswear like the Gen X dads they are, the actors shared an easygoing camaraderie, as if they had met during freshmen orientation week in college and remained friends through first births, second divorces and splurges on Camaros.
They were there because The New York Times had invited them to talk about a piece of art in MoMA’s collection that had made an impression, now that they’ve been considering both art and “Art,” Yasmina Reza’s comedy about three friends and the all-white painting that puts them through the emotional ringer. (The show opened last month at the Music Box Theater, where it runs through Dec. 21.)
Is it possible they quick-studied their picks on Wikipedia on the way to the museum? Sure.
If they did, their work paid off. They enthusiastically ping-ponged between canvases, bending over to study brushstrokes and examine placards, and peppered one another with questions about provenance and technique. They seemed awe-struck as they took in van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” and Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.”
Eyeing Monet’s “Water Lilies,” Harris sounded reverential.
“We’re so screen and algorithm-faced now, and you can watch plays on your iPad,” he said. “But to choose to go to a museum or the theater and join other people and sit and take in something — it’s necessary.”
Much like their characters in “Art,” the actors also questioned one another’s taste.
“You’re dressed like you might steal a painting,” Harris deadpanned to Corden, cracking up all three.
Here are the three works the actors chose, with a guide to where you can see the art yourself.
James Corden
Frank Bowling, “Raining Down South,” 1968
“His color’s incredible, the depth of it,” Corden said of this abstract work by the Guyana-born Bowling. “I like things that you can continually look at and find something else. I also think this probably changes throughout the day with the light. I think this is stunning.”
Corden has a Bowling in his own collection, along with works by Wolfgang Tillmans, Stanley Whitney and several of the so-called Young British Artists: Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume.
Corden doesn’t consider himself a collector nor does he see himself as super knowledgeable about art — much like his character, Yvan, who’s caught in the middle of his friends’ debates over the offending painting.
As Corden strolled past Pollocks and Cézannes, he gushed over Ryan McGinness, Ken Price and other contemporary artists he admires. He recalled exploring MoMA one afternoon in 2006 with the actor Russell Tovey when the two were on Broadway in “The History Boys.”
He then whipped out his phone and zoomed in on a Christmastime photo of his living room, where nestled among works by Manoucher Yektai and Studio Lenca was another artist he holds dear: his daughter Charlotte, represented by a vibrantly colored line drawing she made when she was 4.
“It doesn’t look out of place in any way,” he said. “It cost like three dollars.”
Neil Patrick Harris
Mark Rothko, “No. 37/No. 19 (Slate Blue and Brown on Plum),” 1958
Harris said he didn’t know much about Rothko’s life or process, but he appreciated the emotions — Rothko’s and his own — that issued from this somberly layered painting.
“It’s calming and relaxing,” he said. “It actively lulls me. I like that respite of brain bandwidth.”
Corden, standing nearby, chimed in with a different response.
“This is clearly someone going, ‘We’re at the end of the world, everything’s over, this is a disaster,’” Corden said. “And what you realize is, actually, that this is a piece of art that could have been made last week and would resonate in exactly the same way.”
Harris said he started collecting art in earnest during his “How I Met Your Mother” days, when gallerist friends steered him toward contemporary art and TV money “allowed some financial freedom to buy” it. At their homes in East Hampton and Manhattan, Harris and his husband, David Burtka, have works by Ahmed Alsoudani, Kori Newkirk and Hugh Steers.
Harris said his only recent brush with visual art was when he stenciled some flourishes onto his opening night gifts for his two “Art” co-stars and the show’s director, Scott Ellis: prints by Andrew Scott that feature a boy pouring white paint out of a bucket. (The artist’s unorthodox frames went viral on TikTok.)
Unlike Serge, the cocksure character he plays in “Art” — the one who spent $300,000 on the white painting — Harris made a confession almost sheepishly as he stepped away from the Rothko.
“I do look at art sometimes and think, I feel like I could draw that circle and a triangle,” he said with a grin. “The subjective nature of art is very humbling.”
Bobby Cannavale
Yves Klein, “Blue Monochrome,” 1961
“I don’t know anything about art,” said Cannavale, sounding nothing like Marc, the biting sophisticate he plays in “Art.” “But I do know Yves Klein blue is a thing.”
He’s right: International Klein Blue is a combination of ultramarine pigment and a polymer binder that the artist created before he died in 1962 at 34. Cannavale sounded well versed in color theory and pigment history as he examined the piece, explaining how blues, especially the more lapis hues, are associated with religious iconography.
How did the Klein make him feel?
“I find the blue void to be somewhat comforting, you know?”
Would he take it home if he could? “If somebody gave it to me, I’d definitely put it in my house,” he said, adding an unprintable adjective before the word house. “I’d be like, ‘Guys, it’s an Yves Klein.’”
At home he has street art-inspired works by James De La Vega and Lee Quiñones, Australian Aboriginal paintings, and photographs by George Byrne, brother to the actress Rose Byrne, Cannavale’s partner. Cannavale said he planned to return to MoMA in November to see its retrospective of the Cuban-born artist Wifredo Lam.
On his way out of the gallery, when asked what he most enjoyed about this little field trip, Cannavale flashed his funny guy.
“What I liked is that I got to tell the lady to show me the Monet,” he said. “And she did.”
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