The stars of 'Art' on Broadway share what they think of the play's infamous painting

Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, and Neil Patrick Harris star in Yasmina Reza's play as three friends whose debate over the value of an expensive artwork gets heated.

Summary

• The cast of Art on Broadway - Bobby Cannavale; James Corden; and Neil Patrick Harris - discuss their offstage friendship and their opinions on the plain white painting central to the play
• Art follows three longtime friends who get into a heated debate over the artistic value of an expensive painting

Art is valuable, but friendship is priceless. Or is it? Yasmina Reza's Tony Award-winning comedy Art, now in its first Broadway revival at the Music Box Theatre, draws out that question through the story of a 25-year friendship and a $300,000 painting that threatens to end it.

That dynamic is the opposite of the offstage one between the play's stars: Neil Patrick Harris (as Serge, who spends the small fortune), Bobby Cannavale (as Marc, who derides Serge for his purchase), and James Corden (as Yvan, caught in the middle). Between appearances on the Tony Awards and Corden's Late Late Show over the years, all three men had met one-on-one, but never as a trio before signing on to Art earlier this year. Luckily, the theatre and TV heavyweights get along much better than their onstage counterparts.

"I wish I had a good joke for you, to say we really hate each other, but we don't. We just really love each other," Cannavale told New York Theatre Guide. "These are guys who have incredible [stage] chops. So from day one, I just knew it was going to work."

"They're doing this for the right reasons," echoed Harris. "All three of us really, really, authentically love theatre, love challenging ourselves to do good theatre with people that also feel the same way. So we're pushing each other, and we'll take the piss out of each other if something happens, but with a great safety net."

Now that's something their Art characters don't do: They're quick to judge each other's artistic tastes and hit below the belt when they disagree. What starts as a debate over the merit of modern art turns into a fiery argument where even the men's partners and careers catch strays. Serge, Marc, and Yvan are supposedly sophisticated, but the "art of arguing," as Cannavale describes it, is the one thing they're not discerning about.

"Arguing is good, arguing is necessary, but there's a way to do it. There's a way we can still be humane with each other; we can still take other people's feelings into consideration," he said. "This play reflects that in such a beautiful way."

But when the curtains close, what does the cast really think of that plain white painting? Do they have passionate feelings of their own on whether it's truly art? Perhaps there's little offstage debate to be had, as all three actors said they liked the piece.

"I'm with Serge," Cannavale said of the painting. "There is something it does to you the more you look at it. It's not just an empty canvas. There is paint, and there is movement in the paint. This particular painting speaks to me, probably, because I'm engaging with it every night."

Harris acknowledged, similarly to Serge, that art appreciation is both an aesthetic matter and a business one. "If you buy art only because you're concerned about its value [...] but you don't really like it or get it, you shouldn't do it. But you also shouldn't just buy a bunch of art because you like it without doing a little deep dive into its worth, because it is an investment."

"If you're going to drop $300k on something," he continued, "you want to make sure when you sell it later, it's getting you at least $301k."

Corden's thoughts also echoed his character's; like Yvan, he expressed reluctance to criticize anyone's creative expression. "Any work of art is a work of art that, as my character says, 'stakes its claim as part of a trajectory,'" Corden said. "It's not painted by accident.

"Now, there's a big leap between it being worth $300,000 or not..."

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Photo credit: Art on Broadway. (Photos by Matthew Murphy)