Updated August 2021
The Caribbean nurtured Britain’s greatest living contemporary artist
Peter Doig is arguably Britain’s greatest living contemporary artist. At auction by Phillips New York in a sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art in May 2017, Rosedale, Peter Doig’s painting of a house in the wilderness went for $28 million (£22.14m). The large-scale painting was executed in 1991 and stands nearly seven feet tall by eight feet wide, depicting a Toronto home through a tapestry of snow and tree branches. At the time, it was the highest price ever paid for a living European artist. Peter Doig remains one of a handful of living British artists whose work has sold at auction for more than $25 million.
There are no foreign lands
Peter Doig was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and in 2013 he held his first major exhibition, “No Foreign Lands” at the Scottish National Gallery. The exhibition was lauded as a “mesmerising” and “thrilling” survey of a decade of paintings created during his Caribbean years. Peter Doig’s output dwells within the impressionist genre, often working, reworking, and conjoining morsels of memory into large landscape canvasses from his warehouse studio in an industrial quadrant in Port of Spain, the capital city of Trinidad and Tobago. His paintings allegorically capture folks in their natural environment, whether referenced from photographs, album covers, postcards, movies, or scenic observations. Peter Doig once described his work as painting by proxy and not intended to reflect the setting.
Doig, a long-time resident of Trinidad and Tobago has crisscrossed countries and landscapes from boy to man. Leaving Scotland for Trinidad at a tender age and subsequently migrating to Canada, England, mainland Europe and in 2002 he poignantly and consciously returns to Trinidad with his wife and family (their prime residence for over a decade). This migratory transition says much about the character of the man, his temperament, perhaps the circles in which he revolves, but most importantly his association and relationship with the environment and landscape he inhabits as an artist.
The Edinburgh exhibition title, No Foreign Lands, was taken from Robert Louis Stevenson who wrote that “There is no foreign land. It is only the traveler that is foreign”. For all of Peter Doig’s global recognition and the immeasurable influence that Trinidad and the Caribbean have on elevating Doig to living-greatness, there persists an overt, occasionally subtle, but long-standing ignorance of Trinidad and the Caribbean as nothing more than something “exotic”, “tropical” and “foreign”.
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Is the Caribbean void of authenticity?
It is as if the Caribbean is void of creativity, talent, and authenticity. The development of Peter Doig, the artist, is often aligned as Gauguin-esque and at worst inferring a Robinson Crusoe-like ‘exile’ in Trinidad (as if the Caribbean is a creatively remote landscape). How Doig’s body of work from the Caribbean significantly elevated him to global acclaim is often met with surprise in the art world and art critics.
Discussing his return to Trinidad, Doig said “I’m more directly influenced by my surroundings because they’re so potent. My work is very much about questioning—where I am, what I can depict, what’s legitimate. A lot of it is about the idea of reduction. How can you suggest a lot with very little—without becoming a minimalist?” (Dodie Kazanjian, Dreaming in Color, Vogue, July 2013)
That Peter Doig’s work deal with everyday Caribbean life with a non-clichéd sensibility sanctions his art and abundant talent to draw comparisons to historical artists, including Munch, Claude Monet, Friedrich, and Klimt. So powerful has been his Trinidad experience, Doig himself had not anticipated the longevity of his residency in the Caribbean. Great art and great artist are not dependent on the vibrancy of the London or New York art scene. The art world, critics, and artists need to truly begin to take a studio look at the Caribbean for immense talent and body of work emerging from the region.
Peter Doig: Fashion influencer
Peter Doig’s influence has moved beyond pure art and into the world of fashion. In August 2020, Dior approached Doig to collaborate on its autumn/winter 2021-2022 men’s collection alongside artistic director Kim Jones. In his interview about the collaborative, Doig offers illuminating insights into his work with Jones and the House’s creatives on the development of the Dior men’s Winter 2021-2022 collection and show. Doig was highly active involvement ranged from problem-solving textile applications of his artworks, hand-painting felt bowler hats by the House’s milliner Stephen Jones, and influencing the color story and elements such as the ‘Dior and Peter Doig’ camouflage motif.
Peter Doig is represented by Victoria Miro Gallery, London; and Michael Werner Gallery, New York, and London.
We have a painting of a Scottish soldier who stayed in Antwerp during the second world war. He was probably an operasinger, and his name was Doig. He was a friend of my father, and my uncle painted him. We would like to know more about him. Is there a connection with Peter Doig (name, scottisch…)?