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Lot Essay
Painting has been the triumphant form of artist expression in the last decade, with a general emphasis on artists who revel in deep, psychological subject matter. This has been the case with the recent European painters of acclaim such as Kai Althoff, Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans and Martin Kippenberger, as well as their American counterparts, such as John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage and Elizabeth Peyton. Peter Doig, while generationally at home with these artists, stands out some from his peers in his influences, methods of working and choices of subject matter. Defined by a love of landscape, a desire to critique and yet pay homage to modern living and render life as it is now but also how it might have been many years ago, are signature themes in Doig's work. His large paintings reveal a tension between figuration and abstraction, while also engaging other technological forms of representation such as architecture, pop music, cinema, photography and video. Briey (Concrete Cabin) is a masterful work that demonstrates the tension between the natural and the manmade and illustrates a scene that seems familiar, perhaps even a flashback, though might never have existed.
Born in Scotland but reared mainly in Canada, Doig was influenced by the unbridled and vast wildernesses of the North, man's insignificance in the face of nature and the visual tradition in Canadian painting of portraying landscapes with great reverence. The legendary "Group of Seven" from the first decades of the twentieth century gave identity to a Canadian landscape and a sense of romanticism about Canada's vastness, emptiness and coldness. Doig particularly admires Tom Thompson, a pioneer and perhaps the most visionary of the "Group of Seven." It was Thompson's artistic ethos to depict places in the wilderness where no human had ever set foot before. A true romantic, Thompson's work is a national symbol of both the powers of the Canadian landscape, but also melancholic, as it captures the landscape as it is no longer and will never be again. Doig's regard for Thompson's work shows that he is shamelessly sentimental and romantic but wholly honest in references--there is nothing sarcastic or wry about his approach. His paintings are perfectly specific in detail, yet his works seem to exist outside of time, perhaps in a parallel place alongside the current reality. His references are often based on something that could well be drawn from our collective memories--a canoe on a pond, a forest of trees, and a snow capped mountain--yet there is an eerie, almost psychedelic magic to them.
A hallmark of Doig's work is his ability to revisit the same place or idea over and over and constantly reveal something new. Between 1991 and 1996 Doig made a series of paintings, drawings and photographs based on Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Briey-en-forêt, France. In 1956 Corbusier, already well established, designed this residential building for a provincial, historical French city, Briey. It was a building that would come to symbolize Brutalist architecture, a term that originates from the French biton brut, or "raw concrete." With its striking blockish, geometric, and repetitive shapes, Unité d'Habitation is an emblem of the Modernist utopian ideology, and a manifestation of the hope that the progress of technology and architecture would lead to social advancement. The stark juxtaposition of the utopian building standing amidst the lushness of the tall forest is familiar, somewhat jarring sight, a testimony to how nature survives despite the forward march of humankind. Briey (Concrete Cabin) is the most iconic of the large paintings in this series, as both the landscape and the building are given equal weight, and the trepidation between them is the most compelling. True to his strongest works compositionally, Briey (Concrete Cabin) can be visually separated into vertical striations, as if the painting were made in strips, or could be pulled apart in this way. This may be due in part to his way of working, which can involve collaging together different images or photographs.
Doig constantly takes photographs, which serve as sketchbooks for him. He also clips images that he likes from magazines, newspapers or film stills. When he begins a new work he chooses an image that seems engaging to him in some way. He uses it as a point of entry, and in his words, "like a map, a way of giving me a foot into a kind of reality I want." Briey (Concrete Cabin) is Doig at his most cerebral and yet, most romantic.
Born in Scotland but reared mainly in Canada, Doig was influenced by the unbridled and vast wildernesses of the North, man's insignificance in the face of nature and the visual tradition in Canadian painting of portraying landscapes with great reverence. The legendary "Group of Seven" from the first decades of the twentieth century gave identity to a Canadian landscape and a sense of romanticism about Canada's vastness, emptiness and coldness. Doig particularly admires Tom Thompson, a pioneer and perhaps the most visionary of the "Group of Seven." It was Thompson's artistic ethos to depict places in the wilderness where no human had ever set foot before. A true romantic, Thompson's work is a national symbol of both the powers of the Canadian landscape, but also melancholic, as it captures the landscape as it is no longer and will never be again. Doig's regard for Thompson's work shows that he is shamelessly sentimental and romantic but wholly honest in references--there is nothing sarcastic or wry about his approach. His paintings are perfectly specific in detail, yet his works seem to exist outside of time, perhaps in a parallel place alongside the current reality. His references are often based on something that could well be drawn from our collective memories--a canoe on a pond, a forest of trees, and a snow capped mountain--yet there is an eerie, almost psychedelic magic to them.
A hallmark of Doig's work is his ability to revisit the same place or idea over and over and constantly reveal something new. Between 1991 and 1996 Doig made a series of paintings, drawings and photographs based on Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Briey-en-forêt, France. In 1956 Corbusier, already well established, designed this residential building for a provincial, historical French city, Briey. It was a building that would come to symbolize Brutalist architecture, a term that originates from the French biton brut, or "raw concrete." With its striking blockish, geometric, and repetitive shapes, Unité d'Habitation is an emblem of the Modernist utopian ideology, and a manifestation of the hope that the progress of technology and architecture would lead to social advancement. The stark juxtaposition of the utopian building standing amidst the lushness of the tall forest is familiar, somewhat jarring sight, a testimony to how nature survives despite the forward march of humankind. Briey (Concrete Cabin) is the most iconic of the large paintings in this series, as both the landscape and the building are given equal weight, and the trepidation between them is the most compelling. True to his strongest works compositionally, Briey (Concrete Cabin) can be visually separated into vertical striations, as if the painting were made in strips, or could be pulled apart in this way. This may be due in part to his way of working, which can involve collaging together different images or photographs.
Doig constantly takes photographs, which serve as sketchbooks for him. He also clips images that he likes from magazines, newspapers or film stills. When he begins a new work he chooses an image that seems engaging to him in some way. He uses it as a point of entry, and in his words, "like a map, a way of giving me a foot into a kind of reality I want." Briey (Concrete Cabin) is Doig at his most cerebral and yet, most romantic.