Lot 18 | Peter Doig | "Figures at Red House"

Painterly Explorations of a Subjective Visual Memory

The Scottish artist Peter Doig is considered one of the most influential figurative painters of his generation. He spent his childhood on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, in Canada and in London. Against the background of this eventful life, which continues to this day, a multi-perspective approach can also be seen in Doig's production of images, which draws on a wide range of cultural and art historical influences.

Doig's paintings are created as painterly collages from postcards, photos, film stills, magazine illustrations and other found visual material on a variety of subjects. Templates from individual and collective visual culture - the dense forests of Canada, observations from the studio window, a record cover by the Allman Brothers - serve as a starting point and stimulus for the painterly exploration of his subjective visual memory.

Doig has internalised the canon of painting history; in his works, the artist adeptly absorbs and cites painterly techniques and forms of expression in order to deepen his own impressions. Doig's intensive examination of the paint and its effects brings out its abstract quality. In this open, fluid space of painting, a narrative moment can appear, albeit only selectively. Doig transforms effects such as reflections, haze and fog into points of light, spots and clouds, using these painterly disruptions to halt the narration of the scenes and obscure the interpretation of the subject of the painting. Instead, its fleeting existence as an apparition that suddenly arises and then disappears again becomes the immanent subject of the painting.

Imaginative spaces and elementary gaps

In Doig's work, external pictorial stimuli interpenetrate with fleeting fantasies and internal dream images, coalescing into atmospherically charged mood pieces whose persistent indeterminacy often touches on the uncanny. Beyond the creation of an illusion of reality, painting is the driving force here to open up spaces that venture into the realm of the imagination, releasing ephemeral visions and memories.

With fleeting brushstrokes in reduced colourfulness and a loose brushstroke, a landscape with people is set against the pale pink brightness of the painting ground. This gives the painting ‘Figures at Red House’ an almost sketch-like appearance. Like the expressionists, Doig undertakes a chromatic re-evaluation of the motif, transforming his subject into a vibrant structure of coloured surfaces and lines. The triad of red, blue and green determines the composition, at the centre of which stands a multiform constellation of figures on a curved path. At the end of this path stands the house described in the title as an undefined colour field. A slender tree aligned on the left-hand edge of the picture frames the depicted section. With Matisse-like elegance, Doig dissolves the object into colour and surface, taking it to the edge of abstraction.

The lack of depth makes the subject of the painting appear shadowy. At the same time, the emptiness that fills the pictorial space deprives the scene of any narrative context, leaving it as a loose collection of symbolic settings that remain in ambiguity - as mere suggestion. Here, the emptiness is not a flaw, but a defining element of the composition. What is left out, omitted, plays a central role in Doig's works: ‘When you start, a picture emerges by adding something over and over again. You feel that you have to build it up, from the beginning to the end, and it is finished when it is built. Over time, you realise that what you leave out is what matters. Every artist has to see and feel that this point has been reached.’ (Peter Doig in: exhib. cat. Peter Doig, Schirn Kunsthalle 2008/9, p. 129 ff)

Bettina Haiss