Chris Ofili: Blossom, 1997
courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
© Chris Ofili
Photo courtesy of Tate Britain
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Chris Ofili
ENGLAND
LONDON • Tate Britain • Ongoing
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Chris Ofili’s intensely coloured and intricately ornamented paintings are on show at Tate Britain in a major survey of the artist’s career that brings together over 45 paintings, as well as pencil drawings and watercolours from the mid 1990s to today.
One of the most acclaimed British painters of his generation, Ofili won the Turner Prize in 1998 and represented Great Britain at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003.
The British artist gained notoriety with his infamous elephant dung-covered Virgin Mary painting, which scandalized the art world. A year later, The Holy Virgin Mary (1996) was the source of an even bigger uproar in America where it was on view as part of the exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Brooklyn Museum. Rudy Giuliani , then mayor of New York City condemned the art in the show as sacrilegious and offensive, in particular Ofili's painting and the whole affair soon mushroomed into a breathless media frenzy, demonstrations by outraged Roman Catholics, long lines at the museum box office and a noisy lawsuit in which the Republican mayor threatened to cut off funding for the Brooklyn Museum. The lawsuit also charged that the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art had been financed by companies and individuals with direct commercial interest in the British art works. More specifically, the lawsuit accused the museum of conspiring with the owner of the Sensation collection, Charles Saatchi, to inflate the value of the British art works sent to America for the show. And while Mr. Giuliani's attorneys later dropped the conspiracy issue, the spectre of questionable business ethics remained.
Tate Britain Website
Please click here for a Culturekiosque art exhibition review of Chris Ofili: "Devil's Pie" at David Zwirner in New York's Chelsea district.
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Tate Britain
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
Tel: (44) 20 78 87 88 88
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