Chris Ofili
{{Short description|British painter (born 1968)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2024}}
{{Infobox artist
| honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|CBE}}
| birth_name = Christopher Ofili
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1968|10|10|df=y}}
| birth_place = Manchester, England
| nationality = British
| awards = 1998 Turner Prize
| field = Painting
| training = Chelsea School of Art
Royal College of Art
| works = The Holy Virgin Mary (1996)
No Woman No Cry (1998)
The Upper Room (2002)
}}
Christopher Ofili, {{post-nominals|country=GBR|CBE}} (born 10 October 1968) is a British painter who won the Turner Prize in 1998. He has utilized resin, beads, oil paint, glitter, lumps of elephant dung and cut-outs from pornographic magazines as painting elements. His work has been classified as punk art.
Early life and education
Ofili was born in Manchester, England, to parents May and Michael Ofili of Nigerian descent.{{Cite web |title=Ofili, Chris, b.1968 |url=https://artuk.org/discover/artists/ofili-chris-b-1968 |access-date=2023-02-10 |website=Art UK}} When he was eleven, his father left the family and moved back to Nigeria.Calvin Tomkins (6 October 2014), [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/unknown-6 "Into the Unknown: Chris Ofili returns to New York with a major retrospective"], The New Yorker. Ofili was for some years educated at St. Pius X High School for Boys, and then at Xaverian College in Victoria Park, Manchester.[http://www.artnet.com/artist/12782/chris-ofili.html Chris Ofili Brief biography] on ham. Retrieval Date: 26 July 2007. Ofili completed a foundation course in art at Tameside College in Ashton-under-Lyne in Greater Manchester and then studied in London, at the Chelsea School of Art from 1988 to 1991 and at the Royal College of Art from 1991 to 1993. In the autumn of 1992, he got a one-year exchange scholarship to Universität der Künste Berlin.
Ofili visited Trinidad for the first time in 2000, when he was invited by an international art trust to attend a painting workshop in Port of Spain. He permanently moved to Trinidad in 2005.{{Cite magazine |last=Tomkins |first=Calvin |date=2014-09-29 |title=Chris Ofili Returns |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/into-the-unknown |access-date=2025-02-05 |magazine=The New Yorker |language=en-US |issn=0028-792X}} In 2002, he married Roba El-Essawy, former singer with trip-hop band Attica Blues.{{cite web | url=http://www.mowaxplease.com/exclusive-an-interview-with-charlie-dark-of-attica-blues/ | title=AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLIE DARK OF ATTICA BLUES | publisher=Mo Wax Please | access-date=16 June 2014}} They divorced in 2019{{Citation needed|date=May 2023}}. He maintains a studio in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
Career
Ofili's early work was heavily influenced by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Georg Baselitz, Philip Guston, and George Condo. Peter Doig was doing graduate work at the Chelsea College of Arts when Ofili was an undergraduate, and they soon became friends. In 2014, art critic Roberta Smith held that Ofili has much in common with painters like Mickalene Thomas, Kerry James Marshall, Robert Colescott and Ellen Gallagher, and with more distant precedents such as Bob Thompson, Beauford Delaney and William H. Johnson.Roberta Smith (30 October 2014), [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/arts/design/chris-ofili-night-and-day-a-survey-at-the-new-museum.html "Medium and Message, Both Unsettling: ‘Chris Ofili: Night and Day,’ a Survey at the New Museum"], The New York Times.
Ofili was established through exhibitions by Charles Saatchi at his gallery in north London and the travelling exhibition Sensation (1997), becoming recognised as one of the few British artists of African / Caribbean descent to break through as a member of the Young British Artists group. Ofili has also had numerous solo shows since the early 1990s, including at Southampton City Art Gallery. In 1998, Ofili won the Turner Prize, and in 2003 he was selected to represent Britain at the 50th Venice Biennale of that year, where his work for the British Pavilion was done in collaboration with the architect David Adjaye.
In 1992, Ofili won a scholarship that allowed him to travel to Zimbabwe. He studied cave paintings there, which had some effect on his style.{{fact|date=June 2025}} His work is often built up in layers of paint, resin, glitter, dung (mainly elephant) and other materials to create a collage.
Between 1995 and 2005, Ofili focused on a series of watercolors, each about 9½ by 6½ inches and produced in a single sitting.Michael Kimmelman (8 May 2005), [https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/arts/design/08kimm.html "Wake Up. Wash Face. Do Routine. Now Paint"], The New York Times. They predominantly feature heads of men and women, as well as some studies of flowers and birds.Carol Vogel (5 May 2005), [https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/arts/05ofil.html "An Artist's Gallery of Ideas: Chris Ofili's Watercolors"], The New York Times. Ofili's paintings also make reference to blaxploitation films and gangsta rap, seeking to question racial and sexual stereotypes in a humorous way. In a series of faces that Ofili called Harems, each arrangement consists of one man with as many as four women on each side of him.
After relocating to Trinidad in 2005, Ofili began a series of blue paintings inspired by the Jab Jab or "blue devils" who participate in the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, and the Expressionist group of German and Russian artists, Der Blaue Reiter. These paintings often employed the use of a silver, acrylic background with layers of dark oil pigment on top.{{Cite web|url=http://db-artmag.de/archiv/2006/e/4/2/448.html|title=db artmag – all the news on Deutsche Bank Art / db artmag – alle Infos zur Kunst der Deutschen Bank|last=absoluto.de|first=martin weise //|website=db-artmag.de|access-date=8 December 2016}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/28/chris-ofilis-blue-devils-black-men-police|title=Chris Ofili's Blue Devils: between black men and the police|last=Ryder|first=Matthew|date=28 October 2014|newspaper=The Guardian|issn=0261-3077|access-date=8 December 2016}} Later iterations of these works were shown at Ofili's solo show Chris Ofili: Day and Night at The New Museum of New York which were installed in a very dimly lit room, causing viewers to adjust their eyes to the darkness in order to see the paintings.{{Cite web|url=http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/chris-ofili|title=Chris Ofili: Night and Day|website=newmuseum.org|access-date=8 December 2016}}
Ofili was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to art.{{London Gazette|issue=61803 |supp=y|page=N9|date=31 December 2016}} Ofili was included in the 2019 edition of the Powerlist, ranking the 100 most influential Black Britons.{{cite web |last1=Hicks |first1=Amber |title=List of 100 most influential black people includes Meghan Markle for first time |url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/powerlist-2019-100-most-influential-13459460 |website=mirror |access-date=20 April 2020 |date=23 October 2018}}
Sensation Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Brooklyn Museum 17.jpg|The Holy Virgin Mary, Saatchi Collection (2017)
Union Black at Tate Britain, 2010 close-up.jpg|Union Black, Tate Britain (2010)
File:Olympic Poster, For the Unknown Runner by Chris Ofili - geograph.org.uk - 3110046.jpg|For the Unknown Runner, 2012 Olympics
Exhibitions
Ofili's work was featured in a museum in the 1995 exhibition Brilliant! New Art from London at the Walker Art Center.[http://collections.walkerart.org/item/object/8782 Chris Ofili, Third Eye Vision (1999)] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110506003109/http://collections.walkerart.org/item/object/8782 |date=6 May 2011 }} Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Significant solo exhibitions include the Arts Club of Chicago (2010), Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (2006), the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2005), and Southampton City Art Gallery (1998). In 2010, Tate Britain presented the most extensive exhibition of his work to date.Michael Glover, [https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/shock-and-awe-the-art-of-chris-ofili-1874739.html "Shock and awe: The art of Chris Ofili"], The Independent, 22 January 2010.Adrian Searle (25 January 2010), [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jan/25/chris-ofili-tate?intcmp=239 "Chris Ofili heads into the shadows"], The Guardian. In 2014, The New Museum in New York presented the first, major solo show of Ofili's work in the U.S. titled Chris Ofili: Night and Day.
Controversy
=''The Holy Virgin Mary''=
One of his paintings, The Holy Virgin Mary, a depiction of the Virgin Mary, was at issue in a lawsuit between the mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art when it was exhibited there in 1999 as a part of the Sensation exhibition. The painting depicted a Black Madonna surrounded by images from blaxploitation movies and close-ups of female genitalia cut from pornographic magazines, and elephant dung.Will Bennett, [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1385616/Elephant-dung-artist-gives-a-little-back.html "Elephant dung artist gives a little back"], The Telegraph, 22 February 2002. These were formed into shapes reminiscent of the cherubim and seraphim commonly depicted in images of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary. Following the scandal surrounding this painting, Bernard Goldberg ranked Ofili No. 86 in 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Red Grooms showed his support of the artist by purchasing one of Ofili's paintings in 1999, even after Giuliani famously exclaimed, "There’s nothing in the First Amendment that supports horrible and disgusting projects!"{{citation | title= Red Grooms's Chris Ofili Drawing | author=Robert Ayers | publisher=ARTINFO | date= 20 November 2007| url= http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/26119/red-groomss-chris-ofili-drawing/| access-date=17 April 2008 }} The painting was owned by David Walsh and was on display at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania.{{citation|title=The Collector |author=Gabriella Coslovich |work=The Age|location=Melbourne |date=14 April 2007 |url=http://moorilla.com.au/files/pdf/thecollector.pdf/ |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120710060657/http://moorilla.com.au/files/pdf/thecollector.pdf/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=10 July 2012 |access-date=24 December 2010 }} Steven A. Cohen then owned it for three years and donated the painting to the Museum of Modern Art.{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/28/giuliani-vs-the-virgin|title=Giuliani vs. the Virgin|magazine=The New Yorker|access-date=29 May 2018}}
=''The Upper Room'' and the Tate Gallery=
The Upper Room is an installation of 13 paintings of rhesus macaque monkeys by Ofili in a specially designed room. It was bought by the Tate Gallery in 2005 and caused controversy as Ofili was on the board of the Tate Trustees at the time of the purchase.Charlotte Higgins, [http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1823781,00.html "How the Tate broke the law"], The Guardian, 19 July 2006. In 2006 the Charity Commission censured the Tate for this purchase.
Art market
His Orgena, a glittery portrait of a black woman created by the artist for his Turner Prize-winning exhibit at the Tate in 1998 was sold to an American collector for a record GBP 1.8 million, over its GBP 1 million high estimate, at Christie's London in 2010.Kelly Crow (1 July 2010), [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703426004575339413012478790 "Christie's Sells Warhol 'Silver Liz' for GBP 6.8 Million"], The Wall Street Journal. In 2015, art collector David Walsh sold Ofili's 8-foot-tall The Holy Virgin Mary for 2.9 million pounds at Christie's.Katya Kazakina (30 June 2015), [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-30/giuliani-blasted-madonna-with-dung-art-sells-for-4-6-million Ofili’s Madonna Sets Record at Christie’s $150.3 Million Sale], Bloomberg Business.
Works
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See also
- Indian yellow, historical use of animal waste in art
References
{{reflist}}
Further reading
- {{cite book|title=Art Now|editor-first1=Uta|editor-last1=Grosenick|editor-first2=Burkhard|editor-last2=Riemschneider|publisher=Taschen|location=Köln|edition=25th anniversary|year=2005|pages=228–231|isbn=9783822840931|oclc=191239335}}
External links
- {{MoMA artist|7967}}
- [http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/chris-ofili/ Chris Ofili page], David Zwirner.
- [http://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/6,1/ Victoria Miro Gallery: Chris Ofili]
- [http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turner-prize-1998/turner-prize-1998-artists-chris-ofili "Turner Prize 1998 artists: Chris Ofili"], Tate.
{{Young British Artists}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ofili, Chris}}
Category:Painters from Manchester
Category:English people of Nigerian descent
Category:20th-century British painters
Category:British male painters
Category:21st-century British painters
Category:Alumni of Chelsea College of Arts
Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Art
Category:Black British artists
Category:Trinidad and Tobago painters
Category:British contemporary artists
Category:Young British Artists
Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Category:21st-century British male artists
Category:21st-century Nigerian painters