Peter Doig is the antithesis of contemporary artists. Far from swimming in money, unlike Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst, Peter Doig is a painter that has a particular affection for painting oil, memory, imagination, and freedom. Often described as a “radical traditionalist”, his paintings are unlike the others, done in a studio where a number of works in progress can be seen one after the other. The artist is a perfectionist, and he admits that he often notices “error, after error, after error” until his work can finally be declared finished, and judged to be without a single defect. He often takes inspiration from the environment and history, with landscapes and figures that mix questioning and diverse realities.
The painting 100 Years takes its theme from an observation of Covent Garden. This inspiration comes from Peter Doig’s own childhood memories. Taking off into an infinite space: the artist made this one of his favorite themes. It’s often a canoe like Charon’s boat on the river Styx, the river of memory, that incarnates this crossing of memories. In this painting, the artist seeks to capture the birth of modernity – inspired by Les Baigneuses à la Tortue by Matisse (1908) with its blue strata, he especially explores the nostalgia associated with the troubled waters of collective memory. As is often the case, the painter starts with what he knows to touch on something universal: a photograph of an insular hospital located in Trinidad where the artist spent his childhood allows him to evoke the symbolism of The Island of the Dead by Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin.
But Peter Doig goes even further by transposing an album cover from 70s rock group The Allman Brothers Band onto his painting within an atmosphere close to the realm of Edward Munch. He thus puts the bassist Berry Oakley into an immense canoe. With a touch of humor, the painting takes off on a new direction entirely: Peter Doig seems to conjure physical reality with an inclusion of real references that melt into this elusive scene. 100 Years is a painting that remade the history of painting, but that first and foremost demonstrates the impossibility of being truly anchored in reality, even if you have the ability to depict it.
Like the work of Peter Doig, Jean Tinguely’s Cyclop allows you to travel in the heart of a human brain through multiple spaces, in which memories are mixed (the reconstitution of the maid’s room at Vecut Spoerri on arrival In Paris, in 1952) or videotapes in homage to May 1968, comic thoughts (a theatre play depicts the tragic encounter of a hammer and a bottle full of water).
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