Chris Ofili
Ofili’s paintings are expansive in their references – the canvas a plane on which all things coincide – the sacred and profane, the personal and political, pop culture and high art. And while they might seduce and unsettle in equal measure, in intention they are seldom irreverent. The richly decorated surfaces of the artist’s early work – embellished with sequins, glitter and gold – evoke the Catholic tradition in which he was raised. In more recent paintings, such ornament is replaced with a bolder graphic style, yet they continue Ofili’s fusion of magical realism, religion, and 1970s Afropop comics. Such is Black Nude, its painted scene described in outline against a black background. The seated woman appears as an obscure figure from myth, a goddess or temptress, suspended in the dark heavens. Posed to be seen, she looks out towards the viewer – teasingly, provocatively – as she eats her cosmic grapes.
b.1968, Manchester
The story reads as a fable. An artist presents a painting of the Madonna at a 1999 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Cries of blasphemy follow, funders threaten to withdraw, the New York City mayor calls the painting “sick stuff” – but not in a nice way. This outcry, rather than ruin the artist’s reputation, only solidifies his success. The work is The Holy Virgin Mary (1996); the artist Chris Ofili; the offence unclear. Perhaps the outrage lies in his Madonna’s blackness, or her exposed elephant dung breast, or the resplendent gold background decorated with bottoms cut from pornographic magazines. Perhaps it lies in the two further lumps of dung on which the work rests (emblazoned with the words Virgin and Mary written in pearlescent beads). Offence is rarely specific, more I-know-it-when-I-see-it. Two months after the exhibition opened, the work was defaced by a retired teacher. Ofili, unperturbed, continued in his painterly pursuits; blending racial stereotypes, religious iconography, and expressions of sexuality and exoticism in strange allegories.