return to worldwidereview.com,
the home of critical reviews
From: Clement Greenberg
Category: Art
Date: 03 March 2008
Time: 04:08 PM
Review:
The work of Peter Doig continues to amaze us, even when we sense that this is work that is truly
greater than the sum of its parts.The secret of its success, is perhaps the feeling of closeness to
some fundamental truth; not about the world , but about painting itself.Despite its worked over even
arbitrary surface quality, the paintings have an incredible robustness, a sense they will survive the
ebbs and flows of fashion and taste,and will always be there.Painters have always been aware that
painting depicts fields not objects,totalities not events,its this immanent quality that makes it so
absolute as a medium;it either works or it doesnt.
Doig changes his subjects with every painting;what is consistent is his ablity to see the world as a
continuous field. This is rare in representational painting , which more often than not lapses into
realism,and a succession of discreet planes and objects.Doig is dependent upon the idea of the
painting as a total field, and it is this that ultimately ties his work to abstraction. So far he has found
two solutions to the problem. The early work is in relationship to the dense paintings of Pollock, and
the recent stained paintings, to Rothko.Within these two poles , Doig creates elusive and ambiguous
images that withold their secrets and leave us with a sense of longing for these unobtainable places.