Saturday, May 8, 2010

The Work Of Chris Offili

Chris Offili’s art work is very intriguing, and exciting, and I hope to someday see it in person. It strikes me how monumental and bold his work is. He never shies away from confronting the viewer with bold statements, some of which have been highly publicized by the media. I was actually introduced to his work by the same painting that caused the media hysteria , which was entitled "The Virgin MAry" . The painting is very bright and colorful with an orange halo that gravitates towards the viewer . The main subject (mary) is depicted as being black with a slight resemblance to a sambo doll, and pornography pictures taped around the canvas with elephant dung carefully placed on appropriate parts of the canvas. What I love most about the elephant dung is how it is placed beneath the painting as a support and creates a floating effect for the painting. It is a remarkable placement of canvas that has not been seen before which places him on the top of my list as inspirational, heroic painters. I say heroic because it takes alot of guts to paint the subject matter that he paints. He eludes to a very stiff crowd of art goers with his effortless compositions that make references to Mattisse and other modern painters such as Modigliani. His forms are usually quite exquisite, which can be seen with the first figure and her full figured body that spills off of the canvas which is a technique that I have used recently. Altogether Chris Offili is a great artist with a lovely, confident sense of composition and form making.


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