ART CITIES:Beijing- Peter Doig
Peter Doig is among the world’s most renowned living painters. His breakthrough was a John Moores Prize win in 1993, in 1994 he was nominated for the Turner Prize. Doig is known for his personal, hallucinatory exploration of landscape in painting, arguably in the tradition of European and North American proto-modernists.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Faurschou Foundation Archive
The exhibition “Cabins and Canoes: The Unreasonable Silence of the World” at Faurschou Foundation in Beijing. is a tightly-curated selection of the painter’s signature motifs: cabins and canoes. The exhibition features some of Doig’s most celebrated paintings including, “Swamped” (1990), “The Architect’s Home in the Ravine” (1991), and “Daytime Astronomy” (1997-98). The paintings are juxtaposed with excerpts from Albert Camus’ writings which will interrogate the condition of human existence as explored in Doig’s practice. In Camus’ narratives, mankind strives to understand the universe, but is left forever yearning to be reconciled with it. Doig’s foreboding landscapes express this very condition. By rendering the wintery landscapes of his Canadian youth, to the tropical coastlines of his current home in Trinidad, Doig’s paintings create an atmosphere that is more dream-like than a concrete memory, more magical than a recognizable reality. Through his use of color and composition, Doig evokes an overwhelming sense of “numbness.” One of the major works in the exhibition that was auctioned at £7.66 million in early 2013 is “The Architect’s Home in the Ravine” (1991), which establishes architecture as the subject of the painting. The building, a solid structure, is not easily visible through the branches, and organic material, it seems as though hidden or protected from our voyeuristic gaze. The sense of being hidden, and the dark colors of the palette give the snow-covered branches an almost eerie, ghostly quality of luminescence. The house is engulfed by the landscape and also our gaze, as it tries to retreat from both. It is precisely this transition, from mundane object to magical story, from homely to uncanny, that Doig manages to achieve in his paintings almost at will. Perhaps it may be argued this is true of all great painting or art, but Doig does it not by rendering his subjects grandiose, but by rendering them obsolete. Born in 1959 to Scottish parents, Doig emigrated twice before turning seven thanks to his father’s career as an accountant for a shipping firm, first to Trinidad, and then to Canada. At 19, following a stint on an Alberta gas rig, he returned to the U.K. to study at the Wimbledon School of Art. The British art scene was exploding as he completed his M.A. at the Chelsea School of Art in 1990. Although stylistically he was an outsider, making large-scale paintings that in his words, were “Handmade-looking and homey” against am art scene dominated by the Young British Artists. In 1991, Doig began a major group of paintings, they were of individuals sitting solo in a canoe. He came up with the subject while watching a scene in the horror classic film “Friday the 13th”, but the series was equally informed by artist Tom Thomson, and his mysterious death in 1917 on Canoe Lake . The work garnered critical attention and, in 1994, he was nominated for the Turner Prize, the most important British art award. In 2007, a painting of Doig’s, entitled “White Canoe” (1990-91), sold at Sotheby’s for $11,304,650, then an auction record for a living European artist
Info: Curator: Francis Outred, Faurschou Foundation Beijing, Chaoyang Qu, 2 Jiuxuanquao Road, Beijing, Duration: 30/3-24/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.faurschou.com