Art Fag City at the L Magazine — Like Fucking an Angel: Chris Ofili at David Zwirner

Chris Ofili, Iscariot Blues , (detail), 2007 , Oil on linen, 110 5/8 x 76 inches

I lead with Iscariot Blues [above] because I think it amongst the strongest paintings in the show, but set up the largely positive review that follows with the observation that the first works of art a viewer sees when entering David Zwirner Gallery — bronze clotial figures — provide an unfortunate framework to the show, since they are materially ostentatious and laden with the most obvious of religious themes.  Assuming you can forget the sculptures exist, the paintings are pretty good.

In my first year of undergrad, an art history professor wisely observed the obvious: great painters frequently steal the best moments from master artworks and incorporate them into their own. The artist's ability to gracefully quote another remains among the most important in his or her skill set, namely because it's much more difficult than it appears. A fine evocation requires not only the eye and intelligence to identify work worth the investigation but the technical ability to execute it well.

Among the better examples of this within the contemporary fine art scene, Chris Ofili's current show at David Zwirner, “Devil's Pie”, brings to mind the best figure work of Henri Matisse. Similarly interested in primitivism, Ofili paints flat shapes with a fauve-inspired palette, and even his surfaces, which were once thickly adorned with paint and resins, now more closely resemble the spare canvases of the great Modern master. Coincidently, Matisse offers a particularly apt reference point, as he also drew heavily from Eastern art. Is it an irony informed with a sense of play of revenge: a black artist seeks to reimagine black artmaking through the lens of a privileged white artist, who himself pilfered Eastern forms?

To read the full piece at the L Magazine click here.