Blossom by Chris Ofili (1997)
There’s a certain kind of art that is so pretty, so beautifully patterned, such fun to look at that any sensible art critic feels duty bound to avert his gaze. The paintings of Chris Ofili, currently displayed in a mindblowing mid-career retrospective at Tate Britain, are an example. In most of his paintings, thousands of droplets of paint trace curving patterns across his canvases. Underneath them the rich and saturated colours of Gauguin’s Tahitian palette mingle with the arabesques of Matisse’s lines (only more sensuously, as if—sorry for racial stereotyping—Matisse had been black). On top of that, cascades of glitter often sparkle. This over-iced cake fuses into idealised images of African men and women, of jungle paradises and of love.
The fun doesn’t stop there. Ofili’s pictures have crowd-pleasing titles like Seven Bitches Tossing their Pussies Before the Divine Dung (1995) or Afro Love and Unity (2002) which seduce both the hardcore hip-hop crew and fans of 1970s jazz fusion. There are also curator ploys, like resting the paintings on dung at an angle to the wall, thereby giving art theorists the chance to waffle about whether the artist has made paintings or sculptures. It all seems too easy for the 41-year-old painter who won the Turner prize aged 30 and whose life is now in Trinidad.
Apologists for the joys of Ofili’s paintings talk about engagement with gender, race and identity. They cite the diverse African sources in his work—the patterns from ancient rock paintings of Great Zimbabwe, and the black stereotypes from Tarantino and blaxploitation films. They point to the moving No Woman, No Cry (1998), inspired by the mother of Stephen Lawrence, in which a woman in profile cries tears through closed eyes. Each droplet contains a photo portrait of Lawrence. They mention the subversion of the elephant dung, too. But they’ve got it wrong. There’s nothing radical about using the scatalogical in art nowadays. It’s the decoration, not the dung.
At certain times in art history, and only if employed by the sharpest minds and most skilful hands, decoration can become a weapon. The case study in this is the Austrian art nouveau artist Gustav Klimt, who led the proto-modernist movement of the Viennese secession. The similarities between Klimt and Ofili are striking. Both careers span the end and beginning of two centuries. The paintings of both artists are flat, highly decorative, utopian in their vision and sexually explicit. Ofili’s paintings of the 1990s were full of cut-out details from porn magazines. Klimt’s work similarly broke the sexual taboos of his own day, showing scenes like a passionate kiss or a woman from behind.
Klimt’s subjects are set in a golden Byzantium, Ofili’s often in a verdant jungle. The opulence and eroticism of both artists’ work appeals to the wealthiest collectors, while shocking the wider establishment. Both employed decorative techniques as a strategy to escape the clutches of the art dogmas of the day, in Klimt’s case the neo-classicism of salon art, in Ofili’s neo-expressionism and conceptualism.
Yet there are differences, too. There was nothing ironic about the fin-de-siecle and Klimt’s Byzantine marble, mosaic and gold. Ofili’s decoration, in contrast, is an exercise in ambivalence. His paintings have, until recently, resembled the cheap screen-printed batiks of Asian and African markets, or San Franciscan psychedelic concert posters. His cartoony black men and women come from the Afro-American comic book art of the 1970s. A postmodern man, Ofili mocks his utopias. Like Warhol or Koons, he sumptuously aestheticises kitsch. And like those artists, he has it both ways. The messages of Ofili’s paintings are pleasingly ambiguous. Take the Holy Virgin Mary from 1996. A black woman stands surrounded by pornographic photos of black female bottoms. Her expression could be one of bemusement or a scowl—a condemnation of exploitative images of black women, or a hedonistic celebration of them.
Yet there are limits to the power of the decorative. Klimt’s art did not prove much of a blueprint for the future of modernism. By 1910 he ended his most decorative phase leaving the gold and intricate patterns behind. Here’s another parallel with Ofili, whose recent work shows a similar change of direction, from the decorative to the beautiful. A question mark may hang over his latest Beardley-esque work at the Tate, but not over the masterful dark-toned series of paintings. In a series of breathtakingly well-handled compositions in dark closely toned hues of blue, purple and black, Ofili captures the palette of a tropical night and depicts imagery from Trinidadian folklore. Here Ofili the painter and decorator is replaced by the Rothko of figuration.
Chris Ofili, Tate Britain, until 16th May
There’s a certain kind of art that is so pretty, so beautifully patterned, such fun to look at that any sensible art critic feels duty bound to avert his gaze. The paintings of Chris Ofili, currently displayed in a mindblowing mid-career retrospective at Tate Britain, are an example. In most of his paintings, thousands of droplets of paint trace curving patterns across his canvases. Underneath them the rich and saturated colours of Gauguin’s Tahitian palette mingle with the arabesques of Matisse’s lines (only more sensuously, as if—sorry for racial stereotyping—Matisse had been black). On top of that, cascades of glitter often sparkle. This over-iced cake fuses into idealised images of African men and women, of jungle paradises and of love.
The fun doesn’t stop there. Ofili’s pictures have crowd-pleasing titles like Seven Bitches Tossing their Pussies Before the Divine Dung (1995) or Afro Love and Unity (2002) which seduce both the hardcore hip-hop crew and fans of 1970s jazz fusion. There are also curator ploys, like resting the paintings on dung at an angle to the wall, thereby giving art theorists the chance to waffle about whether the artist has made paintings or sculptures. It all seems too easy for the 41-year-old painter who won the Turner prize aged 30 and whose life is now in Trinidad.
Apologists for the joys of Ofili’s paintings talk about engagement with gender, race and identity. They cite the diverse African sources in his work—the patterns from ancient rock paintings of Great Zimbabwe, and the black stereotypes from Tarantino and blaxploitation films. They point to the moving No Woman, No Cry (1998), inspired by the mother of Stephen Lawrence, in which a woman in profile cries tears through closed eyes. Each droplet contains a photo portrait of Lawrence. They mention the subversion of the elephant dung, too. But they’ve got it wrong. There’s nothing radical about using the scatalogical in art nowadays. It’s the decoration, not the dung.
At certain times in art history, and only if employed by the sharpest minds and most skilful hands, decoration can become a weapon. The case study in this is the Austrian art nouveau artist Gustav Klimt, who led the proto-modernist movement of the Viennese secession. The similarities between Klimt and Ofili are striking. Both careers span the end and beginning of two centuries. The paintings of both artists are flat, highly decorative, utopian in their vision and sexually explicit. Ofili’s paintings of the 1990s were full of cut-out details from porn magazines. Klimt’s work similarly broke the sexual taboos of his own day, showing scenes like a passionate kiss or a woman from behind.
Klimt’s subjects are set in a golden Byzantium, Ofili’s often in a verdant jungle. The opulence and eroticism of both artists’ work appeals to the wealthiest collectors, while shocking the wider establishment. Both employed decorative techniques as a strategy to escape the clutches of the art dogmas of the day, in Klimt’s case the neo-classicism of salon art, in Ofili’s neo-expressionism and conceptualism.
Yet there are differences, too. There was nothing ironic about the fin-de-siecle and Klimt’s Byzantine marble, mosaic and gold. Ofili’s decoration, in contrast, is an exercise in ambivalence. His paintings have, until recently, resembled the cheap screen-printed batiks of Asian and African markets, or San Franciscan psychedelic concert posters. His cartoony black men and women come from the Afro-American comic book art of the 1970s. A postmodern man, Ofili mocks his utopias. Like Warhol or Koons, he sumptuously aestheticises kitsch. And like those artists, he has it both ways. The messages of Ofili’s paintings are pleasingly ambiguous. Take the Holy Virgin Mary from 1996. A black woman stands surrounded by pornographic photos of black female bottoms. Her expression could be one of bemusement or a scowl—a condemnation of exploitative images of black women, or a hedonistic celebration of them.
Yet there are limits to the power of the decorative. Klimt’s art did not prove much of a blueprint for the future of modernism. By 1910 he ended his most decorative phase leaving the gold and intricate patterns behind. Here’s another parallel with Ofili, whose recent work shows a similar change of direction, from the decorative to the beautiful. A question mark may hang over his latest Beardley-esque work at the Tate, but not over the masterful dark-toned series of paintings. In a series of breathtakingly well-handled compositions in dark closely toned hues of blue, purple and black, Ofili captures the palette of a tropical night and depicts imagery from Trinidadian folklore. Here Ofili the painter and decorator is replaced by the Rothko of figuration.
Chris Ofili, Tate Britain, until 16th May
