Doig, Peter The Big Lebowski, 2003
oil on paper 72,5 x 57,5 cm Courtesy: Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015 Photo: Jochen Littkemann
a:1:{i:0;a:2:{s:8:"linkname";s:31:"Weiteres Werk: Olin MK IV, 1995";s:7:"linkURL";s:71:"http://sammlung-viehof.de/index.php/portfolio-reader/peter-doig-23.html";}}

About the work

“Around 1990 the British painter Peter Doig began to develop a mode of figurative painting that was met with great scepticism for a long time. Now, after large-scale international exhibitions, success seems to prove that Peter Doig’s figuration is able to capture the counter images and images of longing of today. For […] years Doig has worked in Trinidad, his place of longing, where he already lived in his youth. After his return he began to run a cinema in his studio in late 2003. It’s a public independent cinema with free entry that shows movie that Peter Doig considers to be important and that are usually completely unknown to the inhabitants of Port of Spain. In autumn 2004 he decided to sell his hand painted advertising posters in order to finance a better equipment for the cinema. […] By producing advertising images for his chosen movies, Peter Doig also creates an awareness for the aspects of longing and flight that have always been present in film. His movie posters visualize a particular mood of the advertised movie, a scene or setting that Doig creates by drawing from his own memories or his expectations towards a movie he does not know yet. It seems plausible, to interpret these posters as a key to the particular acclaim of Peter Doig’s entire oeuvre. They explain his painterly compositions by pointing to the essence of images that entail an intensive atmosphere. They can often be explained as framed, sensitive media of our longings that often are filmed.”

Susanne Titz: Sehnsucht, Kino; in: Rheingold III, Publisher: Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach, 2005, p. 8-9

About the artist

born 1959 in Edinburgh
lives and works in Dusseldorf and Trinidad

After growing up in Trinidad and Canada, Peter Doig decided in 1979 to move to London where he studied painting between 1980 and 1983 at Wimbledon School of Art as well as St Martin’s School of Art. From 1989 to 1990 he studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design. From 1995 to 2000 he worked as a curator at Tate Gallery in London and moved to Trinidad in 2002 together with his family in order to completely focus on painting. From 2005 to 2018 he was a professor of painting at Kunstakademie Dusseldorf.  

“Doig’s paintings on one hand reference the history of painting and on the other hand are deeply rooted in everyday life. Starting points for his paintings are often travel brochures, newspaper images, film stills or private snapshots. They represent the different environments and societies the artist has lived in: the frozen lakes of his Canadian childhood, the glittering metropolis London and finally the Caribbean landscapes and urban sceneries of Port of Spain on the island of Trinidad. In his paintings, whose calm seems to tip over at any moment, memories, biography, popular images and narration condense into dreamlike sequences.”

Exhibition text: PETER DOIG, 09.10.- 04.01.2009; curated by Judith Nesbitt /Katharina Dohm. http://www.schirn.de/PETER_DOIG_2.html