A self-portrait created by Johnny Depp during a “challenging period” of his life has gone up for sale.
The artwork, titled Five, was created by the Pirates of the Caribbean star earlier this year.
The work will be sold as a time-limited edition, with prospective buyers given just 13 days from 5pm GMT on Thursday (20 July) to purchase the piece. $200 (£155) from each sale in the exhibition will go to Mental Health America, with pieces priced from £1,950.
Five takes its title from the time it was made earlier this year, as Depp “entered the fifth year of a challenging period in his life”, a press release said.
In recent years, the 60-year-old has faced a number of high-profile legal troubles regarding his ex-wife, fellow actor Amber Heard.
Depp previously released a series of paintings titled “Friends and Heroes”, which featured bright, colour-block portraits of pop culture icons. Five is created in the same style, and is based on a photograph taken for a campaign for Christian Dior Parfums in 2015.
Discussing the project, Depp saying that he immersed himself in creating the work as a means of creative healing.
Depp’s work— (PA)
“It’s not the most comfortable thing doing a self-portrait,” he said, adding that: “If the piece resonates with even just one person, this art has purpose.”
In 2018, Depp brought a libel lawsuit against News Group Newspapers in the UK over an article in The Sun that referred to him as a “wife beater”.
The court rejected his claims, finding that the allegations of violence made by Heard were substantially true. Depp subsequently stepped down from his role as the evil wizard Gellert Grindlewald in the Harry Potter spin-off franchise, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Depp returned to the screen in May— (PA Wire)
Four years later, Depp and Heard returned to court after he sued her in 2019 for defamation, after he claimed she had implied that Depp had abused her in a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post.
Aquaman star Heard countersued Depp, alleging that by calling her claims fraudulent, Depp’s lawyers had defamed her. The jury ultimately ruled in Depp’s favour, awarding him $10m (£8m) in compensatory damages and $5m (£4m) in punitive damages. Heard, meanwhile, was awarded $2m (£1.5m) for her countersuit.
In May, Depp returned to the screen as his French-language film Jeanne du Barry premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
At the subsequent press conference, the actor discussed claims he had been “boycotted” by Hollywood, saying: “Did I feel boycotted by Hollywood? You’d have to not have a pulse at that point to feel [like], ‘None of this is happening, this is actually just a weird joke – you’ve been asleep for 35 years!’
“Of course, when you’re asked to resign from a film you’re doing because of something that is merely a bunch of vowels and consonants floating in the air, you feel a bit boycotted.”
