ART AND RACE
The Marginalised Artist-
Chris Ofili
World
Art is always linked to the cultural and political
environment surrounding its production.
In the first half of the 20th century, Paris was the centre of
Western artistic development.
As World War II loomed, many European artists fled to
the United States, where they influenced the young
American artists.
After the war, as the economic and political power shifted
to the United States, New York seized the artistic
spotlight. By the late 1970s, however, European artists
were again becoming internationally prominent.
www.artlex.com/
ethnic –
Relating to sizable social groups sharing a common and distinctive
racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage.
"Ethnic" was once a term for Egyptian, African, Mesoamerican, and
other non-Christian ("heathen") peoples.
European, like ethnic arts, are the products of specific times and places,
beliefs and taboos, produced to serve ritual ends, religious and social,
confer prestige, and provide cultural self-affirmation.
Also similarly, European art evokes complex, sometimes conflicting
reactions, admiration, bafflement, amusement, and disdain. "Ethnic"
(like "primitive") should therefore be used very cautiously.
Considering how profoundly we have needed to re-evaluate our uses of
"ethnic" to designate non-European peoples, a contemporary use is
likely to smack of negative stereotype and ethnocentrism.
Developing the postmodern…
As the aesthetics of postmodernism came gradually
to displace previous artistic strategies, it became
increasingly difficult to invest the personal/political
equation with authenticity: image saturation,
increasing interpenetration of commercial and high
art (pop art), and a growing relativism meant that
images had to be framed with ambiguity and irony.
Still political, equally personal, these postmodern
images are more sly, humorous, and oblique in
their approach to activism
Chris Ofili
■ Chris Ofili was born in Manchester, England in 1968. From
1988 to 1991 he attended Chelsea School of Art, and continued
his studies at the Royal College of Art until 1993.
■ He won the Turner Prize in 1998 for his 'inventiveness,
exuberance, humour and technical richness in painting,' as seen
in his exhibitions held at Southhampton City Art Gallery, and in
Sensation at the Royal Academy.
Exploring cultural identities…
■ As a black Briton of Nigerian descent, that first
visit to Africa encouraged him to reconsider his
own identity and to develop a highly personal
aesthetic through which he examines issues of
black culture, imagery and sexual stereotyping.
■ His work draws on a wide range of cultural
references and popular material, from 1970s comics
to contemporary black music and pornographic
magazines, elements which he combines with
humour, subversion and an innovative approach to
the use of painting as a medium.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/225737.stm
Pay particular attention to the surface of the paintings....
How are they made and what are they made from?
Tinie Tempah on Chris Ofili – TATE Shots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlXk8pR20xM&feature=related
Chris Ofili
‘The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars’, (2nd
version), 1998.
Captain Shit is a superhero invented
by Ofili, who has appeared in a
number of his paintings since 1996.
Partly inspired by the Marvel Comics
character Luke Cage, Captain Shit is
a symbol of black superstardom. The
collaged black stars refer to the
many untold stories of fame in black
history. The double image may be a
reference to another image of
celebrity, Andy Warhol’s Double
Elvis.
Description…
The Adoration of Captain Shit is really two
paintings. The pop image of Captain Shit, the
public face of Ofili's art, is superimposed over
the legendary Black Stars; faces concealed, made
secret, by the stars painted over them.
These heroes are hidden from our gaze; they
exist in a dimension beyond the image. At night
the space around them glows fluorescent green,
and Captain Shit disappears.
■ Ofili's originality lies in his joyous orchestration of these disparate elements. His
cartoon superhero, Captain Shit, painted in parody of 1970s 'blacksploitation'
movies, and of the sharply dressed gangster heroes of rap music, actually glows in
the dark.
■ ‘blacksploitation’ - A movie, video game, etc. created purely for the pro-black
movement, usually a modification of white pop culture. E.g. Shaft
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/turnerpeoplespoll/
story/0,,1058541,00.html#article_continue
African American
■ As a black Briton of
Nigerian descent, that first
visit to Africa encouraged
him to reconsider his own
identity and to develop a
highly personal aesthetic
through which he
examines issues of black
culture, imagery and
sexual stereotyping.
■ Part of the New York
‘Sensations’ exhibition.
Chris Ofili ‘The Virgin Mary’
Paper collage, oil paint, glitter,
polyester resin and
elephant dung on linen.
http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/features/saltz/saltz10-08-99a.asp
Audience
Troubling for some audiences has been Ofili's paintings of a Black
Virgin, whom he paints surrounded by collaged-on body parts
snipped from pornographic magazines.
The Black Virgin has a venerable place in Catholic iconography,
and the sexuality of the Virgin has been a consistent, if often
covert, theme of European religious painting since the
Renaissance.
December 10th, 1998
Ray Hutchins, a 66-year-old artist from Staffordshire, protests
Chris Ofili's winning of the Turner Prize by placing a large heap of
manure on the steps of the Tate Gallery in London along with a
sign, reading "Modern Art is a Load of Bullshit". He also said that
"A real artist who can paint should have won the Turner Prize."
Hutchins states that while he disliked 1995 Turner Prize winner
Damien Hirst's work, Ofili's work was the "last straw".
http://www.artnotart.com/f-sensation.html
Title: No Woman, No Cry, 1998
Materials: Acrylic, oil and mixed media on canvas
Size: 243.8 x 182.8 cm
Location: Tate Gallery, London, UK (Purchased 1999)
Chris Ofili says 'the way I work
comes out of experimentation, but it
also comes out of a love of painting,
a love affair with painting.' He mixes
a wide range of cultural references,
from the Bible to pornographic
magazines, from 1970s comics to
the work of artists such as William
Blake. He also experiments outside
the traditional confines of oil paint,
introducing things like elephant dung
into his work; he enjoys the tension
between the beautiful paint surfaces
and the perceived ugliness of the
dung.
www.tate.org.uk/.../ history/ofili.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/03/how-stephen-lawrence-changed-britain
No Woman No Cry is a tribute to the London teenager
Stephen Lawrence. The Metropolitan police investigation
into his racially motivated murder was mishandled, and a
subsequent inquiry described the police force as
institutionally racist. In each of the tears shed by the
woman in the painting is a collaged image of Stephen
Lawrence’s face, while the words ‘R.I.P. Stephen
Lawrence’ are just discernible beneath the layers of paint.
Despite these specific references, the artist also intended
the painting to be read in more general terms, as a
universal portrayal of melancholy and grief.
Chris Ofili – ‘No Woman, No Cry’, 1998 – TATE Shots
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ztLFtL2Yk
Chris Ofili – ‘No Woman, No Cry’, 1998 – Artwork Audio Description – TATE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCcuvl76Ouk
Adrian Searle
www.guardian.co.uk
Monday 25th January 2010
“Until the 90s, there were hardly any black students at British art colleges.
Ofili's success showed that, if you have the intelligence, savvy and
ambition, being an artist is a career option. Someone has to pave the
way. And it was clear from the first not just how ambitious Ofili was, but
how individual his take on painting was.”
Practice
With references as diverse as traditional African art, images from
popular culture, and hip-hop music, Chris Ofili’s paintings explore
contemporary black urban experience.
Ofili’s intricately layered works combine bead-like dots of paint,
inspired in part by cave paintings in Zimbabwe, with collaged images
from popular magazines and such materials as glitter and map pins.
Since 1992 the artist has also included dried elephant dung acquired
from the London Zoo among his materials.
While alluding generally to his African heritage, Ofili deliberately
misquotes the traditional ritual significance of dung in order to broaden
the viewer’s interpretation of this material beyond its cultural meaning.
Combined with his parodies of 1970s black exploitation movies, comic
book super heroes, and "gangsta" rap music, Ofili’s work addresses a
complex matrix of issues that challenge black stereotypes.
