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Chris Ofili Chris Ofili is an interesting contemporary artist. He was born in Manchester in 1968. He studied in London at the Chelsea School of Art (1988 - 1991) and later he entered the Royal College of Art (1999 - 1993). Chris Ofili is an English painter, who has a Nigerian descent. No wonder all his work reflect his African background. In 1992 he won the scholarship, which gave him the possibility to travel to Zimbabwe.
Chris Ofili's style is highly influenced by his Nigerian origin as well as by his preferences in art. For example, he thoroughly examined cave paintings and used elephant dung incorporated in his works of art. He also won the Turner prize in 1998 due to some of his peculiar techniques (in particular, he used the technique of layers upon layers. Each of his works seems to be a challenge to symbolic interpretation. Probably, his special style can be explained by his interest as a professional artist to the traditional creative works of nations of Africa and America, and to city and peasant folks of natives as well. His works are influenced by the desire to achieve purity and reflect the purity life, - the feature of consciousness, non-spoilt by civilization.
Chris paintings are the integral part of his language of expression. Ofili's painting also references blaxploitation films and gangsta rap often to question racial and sexual stereotypes in a humorous way. His work is often built up in layers of paint, resin, glitter, dung and other materials to create a collage. (Wikipedia, n. p. ) The main characteristics of his art can be formulated by following words: freshness and spontaneity of perception and creation real and non-affected naivety, life-asserting optimism and colorful folk, spontaneous pleasure of amazement and perception of environment, naturalness and organic of realism, possessing not only visibility but the essence of subject and event His works are really simple. He crystallizes and clears the emotions by means of simplification and idealization of objects. His naive, childish works help us to clear up and to understand the universe, to take away details that make the things more complicated and compound.
This sincere impulse, which is common to folk art, attaches to his works the importance and status of the modern techniques. We need to add that his experience in Zimbabwe helped him to combine new directions and folk traditions (outrage of clear color, figuration and ornaments). As it is written in BBC Chris Ofili Profile (n. p. ), Ancient cave paintings of Zimbabwe, with their images composed of decorative dots, have helped evolve Ofili's painting style which combines richly-coloured patterning with collage and three-dimensional elements. His works often remind us the childish paintings, which are so dear to the heart. Yet, to tell the truth, such a childish approach seems to be more complicated than one can imagine: his paintings seem to consist of two layers.
The professional artist or critic can find there a lot of serious details, which are the stylistic masking of his expressive works. Chris Ofili has significantly simplified images, which are quite close to symbolism. The peculiar style of his works seems to contrast with so-called illusive reality. Folk pictures and cave paintings were the source for inspiration for Chris Ofili. We can notice simple and bright colors with plenty of details.
Gradually Chris Ofili perfected his original technique of painting and his blameless possession of pictorial technique soon brought him to a great success and world recognition. His attention is mainly concentrated on concoction, composing of paintings but not using impressions from nature. Many people are delighted by creative works of Chris Ofili and appreciate his original, natural world perception, free of academic dogmas. It seems that Chris Ofili invented not only the plots and subjects of his paintings, but the methods of painting as well. For example, he told that some of his paintings were made under impression of his Zimbabwe voyages.
Yet, instead of painting the things from the life experience, he copied them from the cave paintings. Modern critics are delighted by his works especially because his childish naivety and defective strength. Lets follow the genre line in his masterpiece No Women No Cry (1998), Acrylic paint, oil paint, polyester resin, paper collage, map pins, elephant dung on canvas; 243. 8 x 182. 8 x 5. 1 cm (20 years of Turner prize-winners, n. p. ).
This work, extravagant in its color and feature composition, was obviously made for the wide range of public. Being a young painter, Chris Ofili was influenced by ideas of primitive art. You can find the sources of primitivism at No Women No Cry they are expressed by childish and rough-made lines, simplicity of forms and naivety. This masterpiece has rough lines not only in its performance, but in its vividness on the other side of paper as well. You can see it in his exhibitions and can read it in the various art journal articles. The contours of objects in the painting are underlined by darker tones, and although the whole painting is made in gloomy colors, you dont have impression of darkness.
On the contrary, the painting seems to breathe with life. Chris Ofili shows all his energy in strong and simple strokes of brush. He proves that he can create the masterpiece, which touches you with ingenuousness and frankness. I bring this painting as the example of his bright and striking manner. Chris Ofili tries to protect the spectators from technical complexity and puzzling essence. He tries to convince that his vision of world isnt different from ours it is only more vivid and bright.
So, the spectator has illusion that internal world of the painter can be understood by every person. The same we can tell about Ofili's life. It seems Ofili is cutting the figures from color paper and inserts them into the painting he is too simple and too far from reality. When you see his paintings, you have impression that you can easily imagine the painter and his life.
I can suppose that his early works are not the separate paintings, but are quite consequent attempts to shake the art orthodoxy. Chris Ofili finds more and more new methods of painting, and paints series of works, where the source of light is brought by contrast of blue and blue-green, and sometimes brown and orange tones. I like his style, which can be easily seen especially on those sunny paintings, full of life and light. Some of them have model, which is shown by the colored surface it is quite new in the art. All the paintings are created in an easy manner, although some of them are evidently made under the influence of other painters. Actually, his works are the classic study, which is a must for any student who wants to know more about contemporary Fine Arts.
His paintings are unique, they are varied in subject, and in the way Chris Ofili tries to express his feelings, composition Yet, all of them have a unique wild-style and combine bead-like dots of paint (Chris Ofili, n. p. ). The works are fresh and full of energy, they are naive but very impressive. They illustrate the concepts of art in their best way. All his works bring us into a new bright world of feelings. Speaking about Chris Ofili and his color peculiarities we can associate the photos of working Chris with his works.
Comparing the photos and paintings are the best example of brilliant analysis of the importance of color. I suppose that Chris Ofili didnt want to be a decorative painter. He rather wanted to show the life in full colors. He analyzes the source of expression and simply paints it.
Despite of his simplicity, his attempts to find a source of visual pleasure and emotions are easily followed by spectators. His works strike you by their colors and shades. The main principle of Chris Ofili's works can be expressed by the following words: You are to simplify the Fine Art. Chris uses clearly visible and strong strikes of brush. His works make impression of paintings made by unskilled artist, yet, they are full of life. They have much in common with primitivism and the art movement often associated with Matisse the divisionism.
Chris Ofili has strong opinion that colors are stronger if they are simple. These words remind me Jazz, the book about Matisse Ive read several years ago. There Matisse plays like a child, cutting out from paper certain color paintings and making a kind of application, which strikes you by its simplicity and childish naivety. The idea of his paintings can be expressed by the following words: simplicity, freshness, ordinary scenes, non-professional works, emotions, high tense genre, to mention a few.
Ofili's skillful non-professionalism works show us the peculiar stylistic techniques. His paintings combine decorative ness with parody of vision, exaggeration, strength, sometimes irony and even sarcasm. The events, the characters, the emotions, feelings and senses are expressed. The truth expressed in his paintings is quite simple and easy to understand. We are the people. We have our origin.
We consist of flesh and blood. We are primitive and full of life. Such position influences our world view and reveals the mystery. It introduces us to the world of usual things.
Although one can tell that his works belong rather to parody than to the art, they still shock us with their good and bad, with joy and sorrow. His works are technically feeble, but show the freshness of feelings and emotions, which are the traditional aim of so-called high art. The interest to his work is constantly increasing. The reason seems to be, probably, lack of tenderness and remoteness from nature, which are the features of modernism. Bibliography: BBC News. Chris Ofili Profile.
Retrieved December 2, 2005. web Chris Ofili. Retrieved December 2, 2005. web Guardian Unlimited Arts. 20 years of Turner prize-winners. Retrieved December 2, 2005. web Wikipedia.
Chris Ofili. Retrieved December 2, 2005. web
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