Much controversy surrounds artist Chris Ofili and his depiction of The Holy Virgin Mary. Representing the Virgin Mary as a black woman having elephant dung on her breast and cut outs of genitalia from pornographic magazines floating in the background, Ofili’s painting obviously invites criticism. The public gladly accepts this invitation as criticism of Ofili’s contemporary work can be found everywhere. Jerry Saltz, author of “Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary,” an article on artnet.com, criticizes Ofili’s painting saying it is “not his best painting,” and does not seem to understand Ofili’s reasoning behind the unusual depiction. However, in my opinion while Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary is very unusual and somewhat repulsive it is one of his best pieces and the iconography he uses has actual meaning behind it.
Upon first glance at The Holy Virgin Mary the viewer realizes that the artist has represented the Virgin Mary with a black woman. Saltz states in his article that this face has “almost always and only been white.” While this is true, I feel that Ofili depicted the Virgin Mary as African-American because he wanted to address the fact that there is no proof that the Virgin Mary was in fact white. Ofili himself, being a black man is embracing his heritage with his painting and showing pride in his race. Saltz also criticizes Ofili’s work saying that he is mixing the sacred with the profane with his use of pornographic images and elephant dung. However, according to Sean Redmond of the Brooklyn Museum of Art elephant dung is an African fertility symbol, giving Virgin Mary the aspects of a fertility goddess. I feel that this shows creativity in the work of Ofili because it requires the viewer to see unusual objects through the eyes of another culture instead of merely taking the painting at face value. Criticizing Ofili’s painting further, Saltz argues that Ofili paints in a loopy, cartoonish, semiabstract style, as if the viewer is in a dream. In my opinion, Saltz is not viewing Ofili’s work in the correct way. Ofili’s style of painting incorporates three layers of different painting techniques with collages and three dimensional elements. The background of the painting is yellowish-orange while the forefront is blue and green. This layering of cool colors on top of warm colors does not appear to be “cartoonish” at all. Since the Virgin Mary is painted in light colors set on a warmer background it is easy to see what Ofili wants the viewer to focus on. Often in cartoon drawings the main focus or character appears to be washed out, or blends with the background, and I don’t see this happening in his painting. At the end of his article Saltz again criticizes Ofili claiming that this painting begins an “uneven phase of his work” where he abandons his decorative all-over wild style for specific images. To me Ofili has done exactly the opposite in this painting. He seems to have embraced his decorative style by splashing icons across the canvas and representing the main focus as a collage. Using a collage reveals his ability to bring different shapes or colors together to create one picture, and this is how the image of the Virgin Mary is seen.
To sum up my disagreement with the critics of Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary, I feel that his painting was very unique and took much creativity to come up with. Unlike Saltz, who does not seem to find a deep meaning to any part of Ofili’s painting I found that there are many symbols in his work that require further observation. This conclusion could be the case with many works of contemporary artists and maybe we should all take a deeper look before turning the page.
For more of Ofili's paintings check this out!!
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~museum/armory/ofili.b.jpghttp://xroads.virginia.edu/~museum/armory/ofili.b.jpg
Works Cited:
Saltz, Jerry. “Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary.” ArtNet. (2007) 10 April, 2007. http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/features/saltz/saltz10-08-99a.asp
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