Pre-order the inaugural Artists on Artists issue, featuring this conversation, alongside others between Amy Sherald and Jon Batiste and Malcolm Washington and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, here.
In the fall of 2009, Titus Kaphar recalls pacing the floor of his Los Angeles gallery anxiously awaiting Venus Williams’s arrival. It was his first solo exhibition in the city, and the team at Roberts & Tilton (now Roberts Projects) told him that the tennis star had recently spotted one of his paintings. “I kept thinking, She might come in today, she might come in tomorrow,” he recalls.
In addition to being a seven-time Grand Slam champion and film producer, Williams has collected art—sans advisor—since she was in her late 20s, championing artists like Simone Leigh and Adam Pendleton, and even guiding her sister Serena on her own acquisitions. Over the last two decades, she’s also channeled her creative energies into a design practice, V Starr, and penned two books. Her second, Strive: 8 Steps to Find Your Awesome, takes her exceptional career as a blueprint for optimizing her readers’ lives.
Since Kaphar broke onto the scene in the late aughts, the artist has gone on to win a MacArthur “genius” grant, co-found the New Haven nonprofit NXTHVN, and gain international acclaim for paintings that reimagine the representation and erasure of Black figures in history. He began testing the waters of filmmaking in 2016 with a number of shorts and released his first feature-length film, Exhibiting Forgiveness, this year. Its exploration of a father-son relationship is not unlike 2021’s Oscar-winning King Richard, produced by the Williams sisters and highlighting their father’s contributions to their record-breaking careers.
Williams never made it to Kaphar’s show back in 2009, but 15 years after their missed connection, CULTURED brought the pair together for a long-awaited conversation about how each of them found their stride—and what it takes to maintain it.
Titus Kaphar: This is a really good time for us to be talking. You have done a lot outside of tennis, but a lot of people still know you for tennis. I’ve just made my first feature film, and people are like, “So, tell me about what it’s like to be a first-time filmmaker.” My path has not been typical, and I wouldn’t want somebody to think that this is how it works. You had this whole other life, but a lot of people still know you for tennis.
Venus Williams: They’re like, “Hey. It’s cool to see you, but you can’t possibly be able to do something else.” People can put you in a box. It’s so important to come at them with authenticity, really actually know what you’re doing, be passionate about it, and just keep hauling away.
Kaphar: The prior career just gets you in the room. Once you’re there, you still gotta do the work. Have you always been in that creative space? Obviously, tennis is a very creative sport.
Williams: Yeah, I’m glad you said that, because so many sports are quite creative. Tennis is like a chess match. You’re constantly trying to set yourself up and create angles and moments and strategies. That’s what makes it fun. Off the court, I’ve always been drawn to artistic things.
Kaphar: Did you go to museums a lot when you were young?
Williams: I didn’t go to many museums. I always called myself the worst tourist. We had this joke, too: If you became a tennis tourist, that was the worst thing that could happen, because it meant you had lost. You had time to go see stuff. You want to know nothing at all; you want to play the match and say proudly, “I never even saw the city.”
Kaphar: Sometimes the big museums are just so big, it feels really overwhelming. You can go to a smaller museum, and it’s just a few people in that space. That’s one of the things that I love about the Yale University Art Gallery. You can disappear in front of a painting or a photograph for as long as you want. Whenever I go, I always have my sketchbook with me.
I’m fascinated by the way work made hundreds of years ago can still impact us. What the hell did Caravaggio know about me or my life experience? I don’t know, but when I’m standing in front of one of those paintings, it just knocks me to the ground. There’s something that’s transferable, that is hard for us to put into words. But it’s there, and you feel it when you’re in one of these museums, in front of these great pieces.
Williams: I’d love to hear more about your film, because you get to explore your relationship with your father and so many things.
Kaphar: This whole project started as writing before it was anything else. I was writing for the purpose of trying to help my sons understand a little bit more about how different my life is from theirs and why their father is the particular kind of crazy that their father is. Not that I am anywhere close to this, but it was more in line with [James] Baldwin writing these letters to his nephew. Initially, I was just trying to figure some stuff out, and I knew that forgiveness was going to be a fundamental part of this narrative. Some of the bitterness I harbored as a young man towards my father, I wanted to make sure that I was not passing that on to the next generation. It’s been a challenging experience. You did a whole project on you and your sister’s relationship with tennis and your parents.
Williams: It’s so interesting because the film is about a 10-year-old me. I’m this whole other person, but I’m also still that person, you know? I could see the excitement that I had as a 10-year-old. I wanted to play this junior tournament so bad, and my dad wouldn’t let me play until I beat him. Then I beat him, and I still didn’t get to play until a year and a half later. Even Serena, he wouldn’t let her play, so she entered herself in a tournament. I got to relive those moments of pure joy, of not knowing anything except how to play a pure game. My parents didn’t even teach us to understand draws, because they didn’t want us looking at the draw. They wanted us to play tennis and not worry who you might play. Can you talk about how you found your artistic process? How did you perfect your technique?
Kaphar: When I got to undergrad, frankly, I ended up with the wrong teachers. The professor I took my beginning painting class with, he set up a still life in the middle of the class on the first day and said, “Express yourself.” He gave us no instructions. I’m just playing with the paint, trying to figure stuff out. When I asked him, “Man, are you gonna show us how to do this?” he’s like, “I don’t really paint anymore.” It was so weird, taking a class when the dude doesn’t even like to paint anymore. At that point, I just started going anywhere I could where I saw people painted, and kind of just peeking over their shoulder.
There was an art store where this woman taught a portrait painting class, and I couldn’t afford to take the class, so I would stand outside and watch her teach. After a few days of seeing me doing this, she came out and was like, “Hey, what are you doing here?” I was like, “I can’t afford the class, but I’m learning.” She says, “Do you want to model for the class?” The cool thing about that is, I’m sitting onstage while the whole class is drawing me, but I can see her palette. I’m watching her mix colors, and that was an absolutely extraordinary experience. I took a couple of classes in her garage. I could never afford to do it for any extended period of time, but I was piecing it together here and there. Museums, that’s where I learned the most about painting—going into those places, sitting in front of those paintings, and trying to decipher, How did you do that? I would imagine it’s the same thing as an athlete. You study their game. I imagine there’s somebody like that for you.
Williams: That person for me was definitely my dad. He created his way of how he thought tennis should be played. For example, we were not allowed to play defense. It didn’t matter if we got to this shot that normally someone would play a defensive shot on. You couldn’t hurt us. We would just play offense no matter what. He really changed the game, and we were his students in that sense.
Kaphar: You all perfected it. Now people are looking at your game and trying to decipher and take it apart.
Williams: Well, to be honest, I don’t think people ever took him seriously enough as a coach. Maybe they still think it was a fluke, Serena and I. Otherwise they would be copying every single thing. Lots of things did change, but there are certain concepts that they didn’t understand. Which is fine, because if your opponents aren’t taking that from you, then you’re the only one that has it. What inspired your moments of deconstructing your canvases, and creating space, and embracing positives and voids?
Kaphar: It was not a plan. I’ve always felt like it’s very important for me to be surprised in the studio. If I know exactly what I’m doing, then I can’t go beyond myself. The first time I cut a hole in a painting, I was sitting in the studio. I had worked on this double portrait. It was a man and a woman in the painting. I did all the things right, technically, but something, the energy, was wrong. I was cleaning my palette. I have a razor blade, and I was just shaving the paint off of it and looking at the painting. Without thinking about it, I walked over to the canvas, and I cut the woman out of the painting, and then went back to cleaning my palette. Then I went, Oh my God, what did I just do? I left the studio frustrated, and it wasn’t until I came back the next day that I looked at the painting and I realized what had happened.
The painting was about these two characters who were always in conflict. This woman was subservient to this man, and I had basically reinjured her by repainting that reality. Removing her from that space actually saved her, excised her from the trauma itself. I can talk about it intellectually now, because I see what the result was, but I was not planning that. I wish it was like, "Oh, I sat down and strategized." But that’s not what happened.
I want to get into the design stuff. Tell me a little bit about V Starr, the work that y’all do.
Williams: We started out doing residential design. I wanted to do more, so we transitioned to commercial design. We do it all, whether it’s a hospitality project, apartment building complexes, or condominiums, and we’ve done some great projects in affordable housing, too.
Kaphar: I saw the designs online, and it looks dope.
Williams: Well, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the affordable and a lot of the other projects.
Kaphar: Wait, how? How are you doing that hocus-pocus?
Williams: You put just as much love and thought into the design, into the materials. Everyone needs a place that they’re proud of. The definition of “affordable” has changed so much over these years. If you’re a teacher and you’re living in a metropolitan area—let’s just say my area, West Palm Beach—it has become unaffordable. That’s definitely something I’m focused on, and transitioning from design to development, because I love to design and build worlds. That’s my happy place.
Creative Direction by Marcos Fecchino
Hair by Ro Morgan
Makeup by Karina Milan
Nails by Mo Qin
Production Management by Jacob Gottlieb
Digital Tech by Ryan Liu
Photography Assistance by Jack Belli
Styling Assistance by Bridget Knowles
Production Assistance by Abe Friedman and Paloma Baygual Nespatti
