Buzz Buzz: Chris Ofili at Tate Britain

If you haven’t heard, you have probably been living under a rock or on a remote island. Chris Ofili’s name is popping up everwhere, and the press coverage is certainly having an effect on me: I want to go!

Installation View, Tate Britain

Ofili is having a retrospective–which feels off to me, for a 41 year old whose work is evolving to already have a retrospective–at Tate Britain, and to mixed reviews of his more recent work. Since moving to Trinidad, he has begun experimenting with new forms and pared down medium. (To borrow a phrase, he has “cut the crap.”) Check out the video at the Guardian about the influence of the Caribbean on his work.

His more recent paintings are less flamboyant, minus the glitter and dung, etc. The curator Judith Nesbitt says to Culture 24:

“He says he’s doing more of the listening now, working in a more open-minded way, letting it be, waiting to see where it’s going to go.That’s one of the most exciting factors in this exhibition. He’s still a young artist. He’s got some way to go.”

Iscariot blues, 2007

Some of the buzz:

  • “At a beautiful and provocative Tate show, we see the artist and his elephant droppings in a new and improved light” Times Online

Outside the Vangaurdia: Fidelio Ponce de Leon

Figuras

My trip to the library afforded me, among other treasures of the non- supernatural romance variety, a book on Caribbean art. In reading about the Cuban vangaurdia of the 1930s, I learned about a movement that was trying to define Cuban-ness and espoused the forms of Modernism. Ironically, these post-colonial activists espoused Gauguin’s Primitivism as much as Cubism or Futurism. One prominent artist of the time stood apart from this. Fidelio Ponce de Leon focused on depicting a somber, internal world rather than making socio-political statements or studying European schools.

Ninos

The artist lead a bohemian life, disappearing for years at a time to travel around the countryside. Few fixed details are known. Originally born Alfredo Fuentes Pons in 1895, he entered the San Alejandro Academy in Havana to receive drawing classes when he was about 20. He is said to have had a vivid imagination and created his own name. Unlike fellow vangaurdia artists, he never travelled to Europe to study. Instead, he disappeared on foot into the countryside where he worked his way through the land. Ponce de Leon came back an alcoholic with tuberculosis in 1930. Despite these circumstances, his work was shown in Havana and he began to receive critical attention. In 1943, he began rambling again and six years later he died of tuberculosis.

Five Women

This mysterious outsider is sometimes considered the most authentic Cuban artist of his time because of his lack of interest in European styles. However, he did travel to Russia and Mexico, and listed influences such as Modigliani and El Greco. As you can tell from these images, Ponce de Leon was obsessed with the color white, which he used to call “pintura nacarada,” nacarada meaning mother of pearl color. He enjoyed Kandinsky’s words that white acts like “a deep and absolute silence full of possibilities.”