Scareligiously out of Context

I'm an art geek, so one of the biggest things that come
to mind when "out of context" is used, I instantaneously think of Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary, exhibited in the Brooklyn museum in 1996. http://images.artnet.com/images_US/magazine/features/saltz/saltz10-22-07-1.jpg
This painting is better known as the "elephant dung of Virgin Mary." As you can tell from the picture above, Ofili's interesting style derives from his culture background. His monumental painting avoids the popular western treatment of art of mounting a painting on a fancy frame, instead, he holds it up using two wads of elephant dung with the words Virgin Mary painted in a signature like style on them. The initial outrage was Ofili's audacity in relating Virgin Mary to elephant dung, how can something so pure and scared be in the same realm as animal manure? Well such responses are analyzed out of context. Given Ofili's cultural background, in Zimbabwe elephant dung is held as a scared entitiy. By using material scared to his culture, it is an act of honoring the Virgin Mary rather than belittling her to the grounds of manure.
The second thing that viewers find urksome is that the golden painting has pictures of genitale and buns draw around the Virgin Mary, suggesting a pornographic quality to the painting. This can be argued out of the context as well. There isn't even a need to go straight to Ofili's culture to understand that Virgin Mary was an instrument of reproduction of God, as the story written in the bible goes. She makes her mark in history because she gave birth to the son of God, so this painting explains her role within the religious ideology. To go as far as claiming Ofili as scareligious is quite too far as he a devout Catholic, one who tends Mass periodically.
Lastly many thought the color of the Virgin Mary's skin was too dark. From the artist's background, he can claim that the Virgin Mary he had envisioned from his studies looks like the women of his land as Virgin Mary was an ordinary woman until God appointed her the task.
It's most interesting that New York City was so shocked by the choices Ofili made in painting his picture. For a mere onlooker with his or her western ideologies and cultural upbringing, this painting seems more like a scareligious art piece. A closer examination, with some art history background, Ofili's choice of an enormous canvas makes the painting an important one. His choice of the golden background parallels the Byzantine frescoe paintings of Virgin Mary with Christ. By using the Byzantine paintings to compare, the darker shade of Virgin Mary makes sense since the Byzantine Virgin Marys were quite dark, given them an out worldly shade. The choice of elephant dung goes back to the early impressionists' argument of using the material of art for the sake of expressing the art.
I felt the extent to which this painting was ridiculed by the general public and even ignited Rudy Giuliani's decision to cut art funding was taken to a level that was unnecessary. It's true that our ideologies form who we are in comparison to other people, but when ideologies don't seem to mesh well, riots shouldn't have taken place. Although New York City has crowds of tourists and international visitors everyday, it's interesting how limited some New Yorkers' views on despite claiming to live in the most culturally diverse cities.