Peter Doig
Tate Britain
London, England
5 February – 27 April 2008

by Rea Cris

I have rarely been so enraptured and enthralled by paintings as I have by those of Peter Doig. His exhibit at the Tate Britain was the first instance in my life where paintings had held such sway and power over me; that I did not pay any attention to the other gallery-goers or become irritated when they interrupted my field of vision, because I was completely immersed, and it was an incredible feeling. I felt a sense of magical awe and childlike wonderment. Doig’s paintings could easily be magical realism visualized.

The edges of the canvas seem to no longer exist, you truly become submerged into the paintings. The paint is carefully layered, sprayed, splatters, stroked. Doig’s technique draws from numerous artistic movements: a bit of fauvism can be detected, and of course romanticism, with his figures alone amidst the vastness of nature. The figures are featureless, simply part of the patchwork that composes the painting rather being the centre of attention. Everything in Doig’s work balances on opposites. The colours are vibrant but subdued, they are abundant but modest. The atmosphere is haunting but peaceful. It’s like glimpsing into a parallel universe where utopia reigns in the aftermath of an enormous apocalypse. “Pine House (Room for Rent)” [1994] has this quality to it.

Doig draws much of his inspiration from everyday life, mundane subjects with a silent quality to them, mostly from Canadian landscapes. He sometimes combines these with or expands on old postcard or photographs. He also draws inspiration from popular culture; most specifically he is influenced by the lake scene in the classic horror movie “Friday the 13th”.

Doig is best know for his series of paintings of Le Corbusier’s modernist communal living apartments known as l’Unite d’Habitation located at Briety-en-Foret in northeast France. The modern urban structures are partially revealed and hidden by the forest that surrounds them. As Doig explains: “When you walk through an urban environment, you take the strangeness of the architecture for granted”. The cohabitation of urban and rural is a prominent subject in Doig’s work. This does not mean that he spends his time painting buildings overrun by jungle-like vegetation. Rather, he shows us the close proximity that nature and urban creations inhabit. Through his vision, they share the same colours, the same textures.

Born in Edinburgh, he has lived in Trindad and spent most of his youth in Canada. I actually meet his neighbour from Canada on a Highland bus trip who confirms that moving to work in Britain was a blessing for Doig as it where he found his success. He studied in Britain on two separate occasions once at St. Martin’s School of Art and again at the Chelsea School of Art. He finally gained the attention he deserves in 1991 when he was awarded the Whitechapel Artist Award and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994.

Because Doig creates such a magical world for me, a world of complete escapism, the last thing I want to know about how it is fabricated. Some of Doig’s sketches and drawings are on exhibit, and I ran from this room, barely glancing at the pictures on the wall, least the illusion be ruined. But in the end it is the creator himself who shatters the illusion.

The exhibit concludes with Doig’s most recent work from Trindad. The edges have come back, the frame is evident, the kaleidoscope of colours is gone and so is the magic. Doig seems to be testing the waters as he experiments with allowing the oil to saturate the canvas, outlining the colours in a dirty halo. He has switched to using more solid blocks of colour and has started to paint distinctive features on his busts. The sole exception is “Figures in a Red Boat” (2005-7), a return to his earlier subtle use of tones and denial to allow figures be the centre of attention. Doig is here working his magic on the Trinidadian landscape as he once did in Canada. Wherever or whatever Doig chooses to represent, he first analyzes it, experiments with, masters it, then makes it his own.

Quote from pamphlet on-site.

www.tate.org.uk

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