The Art Of 'The Christophers': How The Film Created An Artist's Fabled Oeuvre

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Steven Soderbergh's 'The Christophers' Builds a Fictional Artist's Legacy From the Ground Up

What makes an invented art career feel convincing? In Steven Soderbergh's 2025 film The Christophers, the answer lies in a meticulously constructed body of work, a cast of art-world references, and a story that treats authorship as both a family dispute and a moral problem.

The film centers on Julian Sklar, played by Ian McKellen, a once-celebrated artist whose market has cooled after a stint as a reality TV judge. He now survives on Cameos for devoted fans, while his children, Sallie and Barnaby, see a different opportunity: the unfinished paintings from Julian's legendary“Christophers” series, hidden in his attic, could still be completed and sold. To do that, they bring in Lori Butler, an art restorer played by Michaela Coel, who is asked to finish the works in Julian's style.

That premise gives the film its tension, but it also frames a broader question about artistic authenticity. The arrangement is not presented as forgery in the conventional sense; Barnaby calls it“forging ahead,” a phrase that captures the film's slippery ethics. As Lori and Julian clash in his London studio, the story shifts from a practical scheme to a more intimate exchange about age, ambition, and the unfinished nature of artistic identity.

The Christophers premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and opens in theaters on April 10. New York audiences will also get a pair of free programs around the release. On April 9, Soderbergh, McKellen, Coel, and screenwriter Ed Solomon will discuss the film at Sotheby's Breuer headquarters. The following day, McKellen and Solomon will appear at the WSA Building in FiDi with artists Ian Cheng, Jamian Juliano-Villani, and Martine Syms for conversations about the film's art-world concerns and the artist-assistant dynamic.

The fictional paintings were created for the production by Antonia Lowe and painter Barnaby Gorton, who made 16 Christophers based on Polaroid photographs. The works are deliberately restrained: portraits of a young man named Christopher, set against plain tanned grounds, with a Polaroid image pinned to each canvas. That visual spareness keeps the paintings from feeling overdetermined, allowing the film to suggest a complete oeuvre without overexplaining it.

Soderbergh and screenwriter Ed Solomon also drew on a wide range of real-world references, including Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Jann Haworth, Derek Boshier, and dealer George Barker of Gazelli Art House. Solomon has said he wanted the film to explore a mentor-mentee relationship with a Patricia Highsmith edge, while avoiding the trap of over-research. The result is a film that uses the language of the art world not as decoration, but as the basis for its drama.

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