EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

In 1996 some young British artists who had stormed London with novel artworks arrived at the Brooklyn Museum in New York for the opening of their exhibition, Sensation. It was a hit in both cities. In America, though, Chris Ofili's painting of a black Virgin grabbed most of the attention because it scandalized the Catholic mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who threatened to withdraw funding unless it was taken down. Conservative media and the Church were offended too, not so much by her blackness - there were black Virgins in the Renaissance - but by the elephant dung surrounding the Virgin and supporting the canvas. It was the talk of the town.

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Today, a quarter century later, I flicked through the catalogue and noticed what I hadn't at the time: the "scandal" we all missed, critics and admirers alike. Ofili himself is the Virgin.

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Not only does the Virgin's caricatural depiction mimic his own facial proportions but the inner edge of both eyebrows on the right are straight and slightly angled towards the center (top). The similarity is even obvious in the large photograph of Ofili in the catalogue (below), a page away from the painting. 

The artist's presence is even evident in the disjunction between the eyes. One is brightly lit with a large pupil, the other darkened with a small one. They represent the two types of creative vision used by artists: exterior perception and insight.

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As if to confirm his self-representation and maintain a tradition started by the old masters, Ofili formed the Virgin's nipple into his own initials, C.O. They face downwards though the detail shown is rotated 90° for clarity.

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Unnoticed too, perhaps, is that the "tattered" edge to her garment at the bottom is formed from the shape of lilies, the Virgin's flower usually present in scenes of the Annunciation. The golden dash in the center of each blue lily-form is the pistil, the female reproductive organ of the flower. And even the blue shapes themselves, abstracted as in a Georgia O'Keeffe painting, recall vaginas. This picture, like all major art, is about the artwork's own creation (or reproduction) in the artist's fertile mind. Named Chris after Christ, Ofili as Virgin has become his own mother. He has reproduced himself.