Ofili is Innocent

mikepainter · Newbie Joined: 22 May 2007 Posts: 4 Gender:

Can we discuss this, both from the spiritual and philosophical points of view. I am referring to Chris Ofili winning the Turner Prize a few years ago.

Here we have a young guy laying in bed on a Saturday morning pondering the more important aspects of life, like has he got enough milk in the fridge to soak the Weetabix and have a coffee as well, when the letter box rattles. Oh how he loves Sundays when there's no post. He goes anxiously to the front door to see an unusual white envelope on the mat, not the same old brown things. And wow, wow, wow, he's just won any young artist's dream, with money he'd never thought about. Chris Ofili is a star.

There's something about a Madonna painted with elephant dung which offended my senses, but after a little research found Ofili had used it for his work about the Stephen Lawrence murder, a cause for which we must believe he had the deepest sympathy. That does place a different kind of light on things. It is looking as if Manchester born Ofili was painting in an African tradition with no desire to offend the Catholic religion.

So, we have an African painting with lots of yellow, and never mind what western painters used for that colour in the past, of a very ordinary woman. In fact there's nothing particularly shocking about it and in Africa it would probably be passed by without comment. The problem seems to me one of a traditional painting of another culture being lifted up in to the mainstream of Western Contemporary Art. Should that be a problem anyway?

The problem for me is not in the painting itself, but the fact of new meaning being placed on the work, and isn't that what Post Modern is all about. Thinking about a quote from the ArtReview, which is actually stating the agenda of the Post Modern and Conceptual Art. Put simply it is saying that the intention is to "re-historicise the past" and then "re-enact" it in some way. The word used is a trophe, which is taking something, then putting a new meaning on it. So Damien Hirst places deep meanings on sharks, cows and medicine bottles, if you believe it.

Here again, why should this be a problem? After all we in Rugby have our own Roman soldier who having made his own superbly crafted armour continually re-enacts the past, and as we must agree to everybody's benefit, especially the school children. The word I'm looking for is metanarrative, and that's what Post Modern wants to and is doing away with. The metanarrative is the story at the core of things, and should I say the reason for their existence. Well, OK, but you can't exactly do away with History, can you. I mean things happened and that's that. So in step the great intellects and artists of our time who use the trophe on a continual basis, taking everyday found objects then placing new meaning on them. Soon enough people might get used to the idea as being normal.

So many of us think this is shocking, exciting, or just plain dull and more often the latter. However, the trophe changes the significance of things, it changes the story, the reason for so many things which have long been at the heart of an established society. It takes the ground from under our feet. That may be a matter for great concern, or perhaps very exciting, but the problem for me is the fluid ease with which our society may now be manipulated and changed, simply because the foundations are being taken away. What comes next, will it be for the good, or your worst nightmare? In the end it's up to us to make it something.


	HOME	ABOUT	BOOKS	VIDEOS	TRANSCRIPTS	LINKS	BLOGS	DONATE	CONTACT