When you step into the world of a Wes Anderson film, the attention to detail is something audiences know will be exceptional. “Never buy good pictures,” Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), the protagonist of The Phoenician Scheme, advises one of his nine sons. “Buy masterpieces.” Art Curator Jasper Sharp spoke with Offscreen Central about working with Anderson, the real Renoir, and much more about his brilliant work on The Phoenician Scheme.

Meredith Loftus: I’m very excited to talk to you. I’ve seen The Phoenician Scheme twice now, and I absolutely adore the film. I know you’ve been a long time collaborator with Wes Anderson. Can you describe your first impression of him when you met him for the first time?
Jasper Sharp: I first met Wes probably about 10 years ago when I was asked by a mutual friend of ours if I could walk this friend of mine and a couple of his friends through the museum where I worked in Vienna, the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Normally when somebody asks you to walk them through a museum where you work, you expect to be giving the tour. But when I arrived and met this mutual friend and then discovered that his friends were Wes and Juman [Malouf], Wes’s wife. We started walking through the museum; and I very quickly became aware of the fact that I was actually being given a tour through the museum where I actually worked. These two people loved this museum, knew it very well, and had spent a lot of time there; and they were taking me to see their favorite objects as much as I was taking them to see mine. So right from the beginning, it was a lovely exchange. It was fun. It was clever. It was different. Those are probably the characteristics– fun, different, smart, engaged– that have defined the various projects we’ve done together since then as well. So it began as it as it has continued.

Meredith Loftus: Do you remember what pieces were his favorite that he was showing you through that tour?
Jasper Sharp: I do, because many of them actually ended up in the exhibition that we did together at that museum a couple of years later. We did an exhibition in 2018, maybe 2019, which traveled to Milan, to the Prada Foundation. That exhibition ended up having three, four, five hundred objects in it. It was vast. The seeds were sewn, if you like, during that very first walk through at the museum.

Meredith Loftus: Talk to me about your inspiration in picking the pieces for The Phoenician Scheme, especially looking at Zsa-zsa Korda’s (Benicio del Toro) collection in his house. You see that he has things from like Hellenistic vases to the Renoir. What was your thought process of selecting these pieces?
Jasper Sharp: I began with an invitation from Wes to do this. An awareness that we didn’t have a great deal of time. An understanding that we didn’t have an endless budget, so we should look kind of close to home, home being Babelsberg and Potsdam; but also thinking that there was a kind of boundless opportunity here to think about how art could be used in the same way as costumes, various other things to help define who this person was. Not just how wealthy he was but what are his concerns, anxieties, weaknesses, aspirations in the way that any good art collection, when it’s done with soul and honesty, is some form of mirror of the person that’s assembled it. 

Certain things were quite clear directives. Wes really wanted a Renoir portrait of a child. He has a particular favorite painting in Chicago at the Art Institute. That was out of reach because it’s on the other side of the world. Also, we had very little time. I’m amazed that any museums did lend to us because it’s a fraction of the time they normally require to go through all the permissions, get the conservators to check things, organise transports, insurance, all the paperwork. So we were very lucky to be able to borrow some historical works from a museum in Hamburg. Other things I had a little bit of freedom to think of, in terms of how could these artworks be signposts to parts of the plot, parts of his (Zsa-zsa Korda) character, help us as viewers in the 90 minutes that we have in the cinema to form a picture of this individual. 

So [René] Magritte: the painting’s from 1942. The film was set in 1950. So it’s a piece of blue-chip contemporary art in 1950. It’s very new, it’s fresh. It would have been expensive. He would have had to sort of broker a deal to get access to it in the same way as art is collected today. But also Magritte, if we’d had a Picasso there or a Dali, we’d almost maybe have been a bit cliched. That’s sort of that someone doesn’t know anything about art might collect because it sort of screams “it’s a brand.” Magritte is a very popular artist, but it’s an artist for intellectual people. An inquiring mind collects Magritte. Someone who maybe reads books, as he [Zsa-zsa Korda] does all the way through the film. Somebody who’s interested in the sort of more elliptical side of life. So that was already saying something by having that particular work. 

The Renoir, it appears early in the plot when his relationship with Liesl (Mia Threapleton) is still very fractious. But as this very tender, loving portrait of an uncle painting his nephew as the picture is, it almost forecasts the rapprochement that happens. If you want to go that far, you can. It speaks to a certain tenderness between generations. Someone who buys a picture like that clearly has a soft spot somewhere within them. We haven’t really maybe seen it at that point in the film; but by the end of the film, they’re sitting around a table playing cards together, and they’re all that they each other has left at the end basically. 

And then, the Old Masters. There’s a Vanitas painting in there because the film is a lot about mortality and immortality. There’s a film of two dogs fighting, and how does the film end? With two brothers trying to kill each other. You know, there are little things in there which the art is being used subliminally or very consciously to accompany what the script and what the costumes and what the set themselves are doing as well. And the Renoir, yes, it’s a star, but it’s one star among 14 stars in this film, you know, it’s just another star in the film and it seamlessly fits in. But if you think that we went to great lengths to get that picture, what’s beneath that picture is Mia [Threapleton] wearing an intricately designed costume with a Cartier rosary on a mattress that is stuffed with horsehair (because it would have been stuffed with horsehair in a household like that in 1950), covered in French linens that have been sourced from somewhere in France because they would have been the linens that a man like that would have used. So in that sense, the Renoir is just being faithful to the attention to detail that everything else is on that set. It’s in keeping with how Wes and Adam [Stockhausen] and Anna [Pinnock] and Jeremy [Dawson] and John Peet and all of them put these films together. So it’s different and it’s unique and he hasn’t done it before, but it’s very much in keeping with the aesthetic that’s driving the whole production.

Meredith Loftus: I love that you touched on the Renoir. I thought it was very significant seeing that above Liesl’s bed, and you just describing like kind of the immaculate state around her, even though she has lived her life as a nun practically and was used to a life not having such luxuries around her; but, just implicitly setting the stage there of her entering this world and having that painting above hers. I thought it just spoke so much to the scene. It also reminded me of Boy with Apple from The Grand Budapest Hotel. Was that consciously or unconsciously done? 
Jasper Sharp: Yeah, I mean, they both, They both kind of, I mean, that Renior… Renoir himself was very much looking at Renaissance portraiture of Medici princes, you know, the three-quarter length profile. He was very much looking at old painting, and that’s what Boy with Apple was looking at, sort of Dutch 17th century painting as well, so Baroque paintings. They both come from the same source, if you like, but we were not looking at Boy with Apple.

The other really interesting thing, I think, Meredith, is that when you think about it, the artworks are the only things on the set that are not pretending to be something else. The actors, the set. Are we in a palazzo somewhere in Italy? No, we’re in Babelsberg. Is that real marble? No, it’s painted. Is this? No, this is made of plywood. No, that’s not Zsa-zsa Korda, that’s Benicio del Toro. But that Renoir is playing itself. I think there’s a huge amount of authenticity in Wes’ films. You know, even just as I talked about the mattress and so on. But the artworks are playing themselves. They almost have like cameo appearances, like someone walking into the bar in Cheers and playing themself or something, you know. And then he’s [Zsa-zsa Korda] reading a book at a certain point about authenticity, you know, authenticating art. So there’s a lot that’s going on here.

Then, of course, there’s a lot of artworks in the film that are not original. The Kandinsky, the Casper David Friedrich, the Rubens, which the guerrilla terrorist takes as a souvenir out of its frame towards the end of the film. There are also replicas in there, which also maybe speak to A) how art normally does appear in films and how Wes has used art in films before, but also B) about the fact that all great collectors have their stories of buying things that are not originals. Things are always coming and going in the film. You see people carrying art at the end of the film; it’s under bed sheets. He opens that crate with the Greek and Roman antiquity and busts it open with a crowbar as if it’s a new acquisition. It’s also really interesting how the art collection is also a very tangible visualization of the fortune that he’s putting on the line with the scheme. You know it’s a very concrete depiction of wealth that he’s ready to kind of gamble with as well.

Meredith Loftus: In the end, he gambles it all and loses it all, but he gains his daughter in the process, which I think is just such a beautiful picture and themes that Wes [Anderson] does with The Phoenician Scheme.
Jasper Sharp: Absolutely.

Meredith Loftus: I spoke with Adam [Stockhausen] last week, and he mentioned that there was an Easter egg that some of the paintings featured in Phoenician Scheme were also from The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Were there any other Easter eggs from previous Wes Anderson films from the art that made its way into Phoenician Scheme?
Jasper Sharp: Not amongst the original art, no. It was the first time he’s worked with it. I wish we’d had more time. We had some incredible things in there. The Old Masters from a Hamburg [museum] and all these things. I would have, looking at it now, wished we had three more months. It just all happened very quickly. and Then, of course, a film set is the least desirable place for an artwork to go. Masses of light, no climate control, people moving everywhere carrying machinery and props. and so We had to create a museum-like atmosphere on set with conservators that we hired, registrars, art handlers, security guards, and a secure unit where the art could be unpacked and stored. and so it was quite a. It was quite a military operation of everything coming and going. and Often the artworks were the very last things that came onto the set, when all the actors are ready and everything else is ready.

Benicio [del Toro] said in one of his interviews that between action and cut, those pictures belong to him. If you and I were invited out for a ball and someone lends us an incredible dress and incredible tuxedo and a necklace and a pair of shiny shoes, we kind of have a little bit of a spring in our step. You own artwork like that. You have an original Renoir on the set and it belongs to you. It can’t help but somehow shift the dynamic and the performance that you’re delivering. It can’t. If you were a person of feeling and everyone that Wes [Anderson] works with has profound amounts of feeling in them, the art does something. You may not be able to tell that that’s an original painting, but there’s something in the performance that it generates that is different. It’s very hard to measure, but everybody said that it was noticeable somehow.

Meredith Loftus: But it’s like you said earlier, I think it speaks to the authenticity of those are the only props in the scene that aren’t putting on a show. They kind of force you to tell the truth, and it gives you a sense of confidence to be able to step into a scene like “I own this thing here and the value of it.”

Besides the Renoir, is there a particular favorite piece of yours that was included in The Phoenician Scheme?
Jasper Sharp: I mean the Magritte, I just love. We talked about a Cubist piece originally because that’s also a kind of very cerebral form of art. But you know, the great Cubist pieces were probably already about 30-35 years old by the time the film would have been shot or set in 1950. Surrealism felt a little more kind of contemporary. This is a wartime painting, which is also kind of interesting. I have to remind myself it’s 1950. like War has just ended five years ago. you know Liesl was a wartime child.

I mean I love the Magritte. I’ve known that painting for 25 years. I’ve known the couple. The husband is unfortunately not alive anymore, but his widow I’ve known her since about 2003, so 22 years. um I borrowed it for an exhibition in Venice at the [Peggy] Guggenheim years ago. um and I’ve kept in touch with them, and when we needed a surrealist work close to Potsdam, they were the first people I thought of. She had never heard of Wes. She said, “This sounds really fun.” She’s in her eighties now; and she said, “Yeah, it sounds really fun, and if you think it’s a good idea, then hey, let’s do it.” That painting is promised to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. It’s going to be a museum painting some years from now, so it’ll be enjoyable for everyone. But I think that is a picture that I have a real weakness for.

Meredith Loftus: What is the typical timeline that you were given in order to pick out pieces for a Wes [Anderson] film, and how short was it this time?
Jasper Sharp: There is no typical timeline because I’ve never done it before, and he’s never done it before.
Meredith Loftus: Got it.
Jasper Sharp: Normally, to be honest, to commission a good reproduction of a painting also takes a really long time, you know. He’s not just 3D printing things and getting high resolution images and just printing them in a copy shop. He’s getting painters to make forgeries and what paintings are in the style of in his other films. So I’ve never done this before. I was given three months. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the writer’s strike interrupted this, which gave us an extra couple of months. Basically, I got the message in late June 2023. They were on set, I think, in January or February. We didn’t have very long at all. Having worked in museums most of my life, we would not entertain a loan request to lend a painting with anything less than 12 to 18 months lead-in time. 
Meredith Loftus: Whoa!
Jasper Sharp: Hence, the Magritte and the Renoir both came from private collections because they’re able to make decisions much more quickly. But to borrow a painting from a museum, you know MoMA will not really look at a loan request unless they have two years lead-in time. I’ve organized exhibitions four years in advance to get the right painting. So three months… I called a lot of museums where I knew directors and curators, and they just said “I’d love to help. Not a cat’s chance in the hell. It’s not happening.” Fortunately, I found one in Hamburg who just said, “Look this just sounds too good to pass up. We’d love to help. Let’s see what we can do.” If there’s another time that Wes decides to do this, I’ve told them that we need a little bit more time. We’d be able to get some more treasures together.

Meredith Loftus: Yeah, so I think I’ve got time for one last question for you. How quick would you answer that phone call from Wes [Anderson] if he wants to do it again? 
Jasper Sharp: In a heartbeat. Wes, but also, his entire team. The producers, the crew, the cast. There is a wonderful blend of diligence, attention to detail, professionalism. Chasing down every rabbit hole to see what might be at the bottom of it with a wonderful camaraderie. People who are at the absolute top of their game, in terms of the collaborators and a lovely spirit and a great encouragement amongst each other. It’s the first time I’ve ever been on a major film set in my life, and it was just fascinating. So, in a heartbeat.

Meredith Loftus: Jasper, it has been such a pleasure talking to you. Congratulations on everything: for curating and selecting the art that we see in The Phoenician Scheme and the storytelling that you do as part of this film. It doesn’t go unnoticed.
Jasper Sharp: Very kind. Lovely to talk to you, Meredith.

The Phoenician Scheme is currently in theaters.
You can find our review of the film here.