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拍品專文
A masterpiece on paper by Peter Doig, Cobourg 3+1 more (1995) is the direct study from one of the artist's most famous paintings of the same name, now in the collection of Provinzial Rheinland Versicherung, Düsseldorf. Executed a year after the final painting, the current work borrows from the left-hand side of the composition and here adapts the oil to the medium of paper rather than canvas, utilizing the full liquid properties of the paint itself in a unique way. Both works "imply a world that [continues] beyond the boundaries of the canvas, a place, perhaps, to which the mind as well as the eye could somehow travel and then inhabit" (A. Searle, 'A Kind of Blankness,' in A. Searle et al. (eds.), Peter Doig, London 2007, p. 52).
An intimate scene with snow as its subject, Cobourg 3+1 more (1995) captures in all its textural wonderment an absorbing winter scene from Peter Doig's memories of Canada. Cobourg is located in a rural enclave 60 miles outside of Toronto, where Doig lived in the years immediately preceding his first move to London at the age of 19. However this work was executed from his studio in London 16 years later, generating the same sense of memory through painterly technique that is so evident in his oil on canvas works from the same period. Softly translucent and bespeckled, snow drifts down in a whirling cadence before our eyes. Obfuscated in an atmospheric haze, the misty purple figures in the distance are enveloped in the cloudiness of a snowy day, becoming ethereal in their elongated reflection on the pond's icy surface. A cold winter light of greys, mint greens and ambers softly radiates from the painting's surface, eliciting within the viewer feelings of both comfort and solitude. Doig's characteristically thick, impastoed surface captures the almost rhythmic movements of the artist's brush, which mirror the dynamic eddies of snow crossing the scene.
In Cobourg 3+1 more, Doig invokes a wealth of art historical reference: Jackson Pollock's kinetic eddies of 'all-over painting,' Mark Rothko's color registers and gauzy layers of color, Pierre Bonnard's dreamlike imaginary, Edvard Munch's expressive visions, and the snow-filled visions of Pieter Bruegel with the lesser known David Milne. The deeply erudite artist navigates these sources with seamless dexterity, creating a beguiling scene that is spectacularly unique and powerfully his own.
Acting as a sort of talisman, snow has an especially transformative quality in Doig's works from the early 1990s. As the artist has explained, "I often paint scenes with snow because snow somehow has this effect of drawing you inwards" (P. Doig, quoted in R. Schiff, "Incidents" in J. Nesbitt (ed.), Peter Doig, exh. cat., Tate Britain, London, 2008, p. 27). In this respect Doig was deeply influenced by the veils of snow lacing the canvases of Pieter Bruegel, using this conceit to a meditative and deeply evocative effect. As Doig explained, "when you look at [Bruegel's painting] the snow is almost all the same size, it's not perspectival, it's the notion of the 'idea' of snow, which I like. It becomes like a screen, making you look through it" (P. Doig, quoted in ibid., p. 30). Doig's handing of paint lends itself to capturing the elemental qualities of snow in accumulating layers of translucency and rich opacity.
Doig's often idiosyncratic color palette is reminiscent of the depiction of landscapes by Bonnard, recalling the Post-Impressionist's magical application of paint to render the world as vivid as a glowing memory or cherished dream. Of Bonnard's paintings, Doig enthused, "despite the lack of visible information, they give you everything you need to know: not only their identity, but also their moodSomehow he is painting the space that is behind the eyes. It's as if you were lying in bed trying hard to remember what something looked like. And Bonnard managed to paint that strange state. It is not a photographic space at all. It is a memory space, but one which is based on reality" (P. Doig, quoted in "Peter Doig: Twenty Questions (extract), 2001," in A. Searle et al. (eds.), Peter Doig, London 2007, p. 142). More than a frozen moment of figures on a lake on a snowy day, Cobourg 3+1 more is the visual manifestation of a sensory experience, the edges blurry and glimmering as though on the brink of evaporation. Of this quality, Doig has explained, "I wanted to create the impression of an image fading from view, as if it was pinned to a bedroom wall where the occupant of the room was viewing it as he faded off to slee"' (P. Doig, quoted in R. Schiff, "Drift," in R. Schiff, (ed.), Peter Doig, New York 2011, p. 302). Like this image fading from view we, like the figures beyond, are enveloped in a moment, lost within its snowy expanse.
Starting with brilliant, chromatic pigments, Doig's process of mixing, grounding and stretching results in triumphant combinations of color that we recall in our minds even when our eyes are closed. We see glimmers of turquoise emerging from beneath a blanket of snow white on the lake, the hot streaks of violet that embody the reflection of naked birch trees in the distance. The abstracted limbs of barren trees stand out like fragments of memory, not quite the past or present, but a moment from our own sub-conscious. Indeed the interplay of Doig's painterly application of paint and chromatic color saturates our vision, and in blurring the edges of distinction, creates a sort of visionary waking dream, operating on the cusp of representation and reality, figuration and abstraction. The streaking, spotting, opacity and contrasting hues and textures combine to evoke an emotive quality that refutes any reference to a specific moment in reality. In many ways this effect recalls the work of Gerhard Richter, whose abstracts enter a complex visual fluctuation between abstraction and figuration. It is perhaps no surprise then to uncover that like Richter, Doig's painterly process has a basis in photography. Indeed the critic Roberta Smith has exclaimed that "[Doig's work] fuses the strands of Mr. Richter's split career-his photo-realist works and the frozen gestures of his abstraction-into single works" (R. Smith, "Art in Review," New York Times, 30 September 1994).
In explaining why he often begins his paintings from the antecedents of a photograph, Doig has said, "the detail of a leaf does not really interest me-but getting across the feeling that what one is looking at may be a leaf does" (P. Doig, quoted in R. Schiff, "Drift," in R. Schiff, (ed.), Peter Doig, New York 2011, p. 306). Because our minds do not capture and relive static imagery, but moments or scenes that are re-played slightly differently each time according to our own mood and at a certain moment, Doig feels that painting more accurately captures this type of reality. "A painting [is] not fixed, like a photograph is [photographs] don't change, neither over the course of the day nor through the light that hits themthey always look the same[paintings] because of their textureare constantly changing" (P. Doig, quoted in ibid., p. 306). Indeed Cobourg 3+1 more epitomises this, presenting different parts of itself for the delight of the viewer and enticing us to enter the magical vision rendered from Doig's mind's eye.
Landscape as a background and support for psychological experience is augmented in the hands of Doig through his adept use of reflection. In Cobourg 3+1 more, Doig has not only reflected the figures within the glimmering surface of the frozen pond, but he has extended this quality to the trees in the horizon line. As Judith Nesbitt has asserted, "the formal resolution of the painting comes through the inversion of the represented image. This mirroring complicates the reading of the subject, which becomes a mirage-a deceptive tracery of paint" (J. Nesbitt, "A Suitable Distance," J. Nesbitt (ed.), Peter Doig, exh. cat., Tate Britain, London, 2008, p. 14). Reflections feature in many of Doig's most important works of the early 1990s such as White Canoe (1990-1991), Pond Life (1992), Blotter (1993) (National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery), and Reflection (What does your soul look like) (1996). These doublings not only allude to reflections in the figurative world but also in the imagination. As Doig elucidates, "the mirroring opened up another world. It went from being something like a recognisable reality to something more magical" (P. Doig, quoted in ibid., p. 14).
An intimate scene with snow as its subject, Cobourg 3+1 more (1995) captures in all its textural wonderment an absorbing winter scene from Peter Doig's memories of Canada. Cobourg is located in a rural enclave 60 miles outside of Toronto, where Doig lived in the years immediately preceding his first move to London at the age of 19. However this work was executed from his studio in London 16 years later, generating the same sense of memory through painterly technique that is so evident in his oil on canvas works from the same period. Softly translucent and bespeckled, snow drifts down in a whirling cadence before our eyes. Obfuscated in an atmospheric haze, the misty purple figures in the distance are enveloped in the cloudiness of a snowy day, becoming ethereal in their elongated reflection on the pond's icy surface. A cold winter light of greys, mint greens and ambers softly radiates from the painting's surface, eliciting within the viewer feelings of both comfort and solitude. Doig's characteristically thick, impastoed surface captures the almost rhythmic movements of the artist's brush, which mirror the dynamic eddies of snow crossing the scene.
In Cobourg 3+1 more, Doig invokes a wealth of art historical reference: Jackson Pollock's kinetic eddies of 'all-over painting,' Mark Rothko's color registers and gauzy layers of color, Pierre Bonnard's dreamlike imaginary, Edvard Munch's expressive visions, and the snow-filled visions of Pieter Bruegel with the lesser known David Milne. The deeply erudite artist navigates these sources with seamless dexterity, creating a beguiling scene that is spectacularly unique and powerfully his own.
Acting as a sort of talisman, snow has an especially transformative quality in Doig's works from the early 1990s. As the artist has explained, "I often paint scenes with snow because snow somehow has this effect of drawing you inwards" (P. Doig, quoted in R. Schiff, "Incidents" in J. Nesbitt (ed.), Peter Doig, exh. cat., Tate Britain, London, 2008, p. 27). In this respect Doig was deeply influenced by the veils of snow lacing the canvases of Pieter Bruegel, using this conceit to a meditative and deeply evocative effect. As Doig explained, "when you look at [Bruegel's painting] the snow is almost all the same size, it's not perspectival, it's the notion of the 'idea' of snow, which I like. It becomes like a screen, making you look through it" (P. Doig, quoted in ibid., p. 30). Doig's handing of paint lends itself to capturing the elemental qualities of snow in accumulating layers of translucency and rich opacity.
Doig's often idiosyncratic color palette is reminiscent of the depiction of landscapes by Bonnard, recalling the Post-Impressionist's magical application of paint to render the world as vivid as a glowing memory or cherished dream. Of Bonnard's paintings, Doig enthused, "despite the lack of visible information, they give you everything you need to know: not only their identity, but also their moodSomehow he is painting the space that is behind the eyes. It's as if you were lying in bed trying hard to remember what something looked like. And Bonnard managed to paint that strange state. It is not a photographic space at all. It is a memory space, but one which is based on reality" (P. Doig, quoted in "Peter Doig: Twenty Questions (extract), 2001," in A. Searle et al. (eds.), Peter Doig, London 2007, p. 142). More than a frozen moment of figures on a lake on a snowy day, Cobourg 3+1 more is the visual manifestation of a sensory experience, the edges blurry and glimmering as though on the brink of evaporation. Of this quality, Doig has explained, "I wanted to create the impression of an image fading from view, as if it was pinned to a bedroom wall where the occupant of the room was viewing it as he faded off to slee"' (P. Doig, quoted in R. Schiff, "Drift," in R. Schiff, (ed.), Peter Doig, New York 2011, p. 302). Like this image fading from view we, like the figures beyond, are enveloped in a moment, lost within its snowy expanse.
Starting with brilliant, chromatic pigments, Doig's process of mixing, grounding and stretching results in triumphant combinations of color that we recall in our minds even when our eyes are closed. We see glimmers of turquoise emerging from beneath a blanket of snow white on the lake, the hot streaks of violet that embody the reflection of naked birch trees in the distance. The abstracted limbs of barren trees stand out like fragments of memory, not quite the past or present, but a moment from our own sub-conscious. Indeed the interplay of Doig's painterly application of paint and chromatic color saturates our vision, and in blurring the edges of distinction, creates a sort of visionary waking dream, operating on the cusp of representation and reality, figuration and abstraction. The streaking, spotting, opacity and contrasting hues and textures combine to evoke an emotive quality that refutes any reference to a specific moment in reality. In many ways this effect recalls the work of Gerhard Richter, whose abstracts enter a complex visual fluctuation between abstraction and figuration. It is perhaps no surprise then to uncover that like Richter, Doig's painterly process has a basis in photography. Indeed the critic Roberta Smith has exclaimed that "[Doig's work] fuses the strands of Mr. Richter's split career-his photo-realist works and the frozen gestures of his abstraction-into single works" (R. Smith, "Art in Review," New York Times, 30 September 1994).
In explaining why he often begins his paintings from the antecedents of a photograph, Doig has said, "the detail of a leaf does not really interest me-but getting across the feeling that what one is looking at may be a leaf does" (P. Doig, quoted in R. Schiff, "Drift," in R. Schiff, (ed.), Peter Doig, New York 2011, p. 306). Because our minds do not capture and relive static imagery, but moments or scenes that are re-played slightly differently each time according to our own mood and at a certain moment, Doig feels that painting more accurately captures this type of reality. "A painting [is] not fixed, like a photograph is [photographs] don't change, neither over the course of the day nor through the light that hits themthey always look the same[paintings] because of their textureare constantly changing" (P. Doig, quoted in ibid., p. 306). Indeed Cobourg 3+1 more epitomises this, presenting different parts of itself for the delight of the viewer and enticing us to enter the magical vision rendered from Doig's mind's eye.
Landscape as a background and support for psychological experience is augmented in the hands of Doig through his adept use of reflection. In Cobourg 3+1 more, Doig has not only reflected the figures within the glimmering surface of the frozen pond, but he has extended this quality to the trees in the horizon line. As Judith Nesbitt has asserted, "the formal resolution of the painting comes through the inversion of the represented image. This mirroring complicates the reading of the subject, which becomes a mirage-a deceptive tracery of paint" (J. Nesbitt, "A Suitable Distance," J. Nesbitt (ed.), Peter Doig, exh. cat., Tate Britain, London, 2008, p. 14). Reflections feature in many of Doig's most important works of the early 1990s such as White Canoe (1990-1991), Pond Life (1992), Blotter (1993) (National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery), and Reflection (What does your soul look like) (1996). These doublings not only allude to reflections in the figurative world but also in the imagination. As Doig elucidates, "the mirroring opened up another world. It went from being something like a recognisable reality to something more magical" (P. Doig, quoted in ibid., p. 14).