Russ Noto, "Dialogue No. 1", oil on canvas, 2024. Provided photo.

What did Andre the Giant and Samuel Beckett have in common? Well, according to artist Russ Noto, the iconic professional wrestler and the heralded Irish writer had more in common than meets the eye. The story—originally reported by Cary Elwes of the set of The Princess Bride—goes like this: while growing up in rural France in the 1950s, Andre Roussimoff was neighbors with Beckett, who had recently moved to the village. Instead of taking the school bus, Beckett would often drive the local children to school, Roussimoff, who was already massive at the age of 12, was one of them. It is that story that inspired Noto’s latest exhibition, OF FORM AND FUTILITY: Visual Dialogues Pertaining to the Pastoral of Andre the Giant and Samuel Beckett, now on view at Art Center Sarasota. Noto will host an Artist Talk about the exhibition at Art Center Sarasota on Friday, December 5.

For Noto, a child of the 1980s and ‘90s, Andre the Giant was a larger than life figure. As he grew older, Samuel Beckett’s tragicomic and absurdist works spoke to him. The contrast between the “low brow” entertainment of professional wrestling and the Nobel Prize winning literature of Beckett created a dialogue Noto sought to explore. “The fact that Andre the Giant sat in Samuel Beckett’s truck is just an explosion of possibility,” says Noto. “There are two levels to it: one, they are completely different people, which serves as the spark, and two, these are two culturally important people.”

Noto explores that dichotomy through his paintings, with works such as Dialogue No. 1 (Samuel Beckett and Andre the Giant), which spreads across two canvases. On one, a stack of worn tires sits alone in a pastoral background, an arc of light hanging above it. On the other, that same stack of tires is depicted as a solid, spherical shape. “This is the first work that encapsulates the abstraction of what their interaction could have been and felt like conceptually. There’s this massive, towering stack of tires, that are ringed with this halo which lends itself to the mythology or sainthood of the character,” says Noto. “Then on the other canvas there’s this stark interpretation of what that could be.”

Beneath that contrast, however, lies similarities between the wrestler and the writer. “Professional wrestling was fake, totally absurd and intentionally humorous—Andre was an actor in a production,” says Noto. “Not only was Beckett a playwright, but he dealt with that same kind of humor found in professional wrestling in a very intellectual and succinct way.”

Russ Noto: OF FORM AND FUTILITY Artist Talk 5:30pm, Art Center Sarasota, 707 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota

Russ Noto, "Dialogue No. 1", oil on canvas, 2024. Provided photo.

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