It's not about perfection:Peter Doig at the Michael Werner Gallery.

"I love Trinidad and I love living there. But it's quite harsh" - Peter Doig.

In 2007, at Sotheby's, Peter Doig's painting White Canoe sold for $11,300,000. At the time, an auction record for a living European artist and, it hardly needs stating, an astronomical sum that, even if Doig only saw a fraction of it, would pretty much guarantee future financial security for the rest of his life.

Given money like that there must be a temptation to retire to the Caribbean and take the rest of your life off. At the very least you'd not need to worry about selling paintings in the future and you'd be free to make whatever you want. 

Musical Equipment Ltd (2019)

While the latter has certainly proved true, the former was not really an option for Peter Doig. Although he was born, in 1959, in Edinburgh, he moved, with his family, to Trinidad just three years later. So he was, for the most part, in the Caribbean already!

In his latest London show, given the no mess title Paintings, you certainly get a feel for the bright colours, the music, the architecture, the landscape, and even the moonlit nights of the Caribbean. Or at least how I imagine it. I've been to Cuba. Once. Nearly twenty years ago.

I'm an unreliable narrator. I'm going by that visit to Cuba and later trips to Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Peru. Latin America rather than the Caribbean in the most part. I also thought back to Doig's friend, Chris Ofili's delightful and intriguing Weaving Magic in The National Gallery's Sunley Room in 2017. The Michael Werner Gallery in Mayfair may be a less august institution than the National but it's got an impressively ornate wooden staircase and you have to press a buzzer before a posh lady lets you in.

Lion in the Road (Sailors) (2019)

It's about the closest I get to feeling important these days. I do feel privileged, however, to live in a city where I can access so much art for free. Some of it is rubbish, some of it is just okay, and some of it is fantastic. I'm putting Peter Doig in the latter category. I can see the influence, in his work, of artists like Edvard Munch, David Hockney, Giorgio di Chirico, and Paul Gauguin and yet his paintings never seem derivative. He appears inspired by these artists to forge his own identity, rather than follow in their footsteps.

He uses them as launching pads rather than role models. They're a fairly disparate bunch of forebears so it's probably no surprise that his art has, for want of a better word, a kind of mongrel quality. It's also this sense of hybrid that I think is what speaks to contemporary art enthusiasts. It's a more democratic style of art, freer, less formal, not constrained by strict guidelines. I can't help but think that Doig's borderline nomadic life (as well as Scotland and Trinidad, he's lived in England and Canada and also held down a post as Professor of the Fine Arts Academy in Dusseldorf) has also deeply informed his art.

Bather (Sings Calypso) (2019)

Music (2 Trees) (2019)

There's a sense of wanderlust, at looking at new things with the innocence, and the eyes, of a child. A sense, really, of wonder. Musical Equipment Ltd marvels at the bustling street life and gaily painted walls of, I'm guessing, Port of Spain, Music (2 Trees) gives a more campesino style view of Trinidad, and Doig's two lion paintings (Lion in the Road and Fire Down Below) capture the metaphysical with their long shadows, juxtapositions, and a sense of magical realism.

Reasonably familiar buildings like lighthouses are rendered unnerving. Shadows take on a menacing nature. The potentially lethal big cats are, in fact, the least concerning element of the entire composition. Other tropes appear and reappear in Doig's work too. Wheelchairs, bathers (cf.Gauguin), and faces that can sometimes look almost haunted or contorted in pain (cf.Munch).

Three Men with a Rope (2019)

Untitled (Small Wheelchair) (2019)

Lion (Fire Down Below) (2019)

Untitled (Wheelchair) (2019)

But, perhaps second only to sunsets, music proves to be a regular feature in Doig's work. Either pushed to the forefront (Music (2 Trees), used as a title (Musical Equipment Ltd, Bather (Sings Calypso), or by the simple virtue of including a musical instrument in the painting. Guitars feature in Music (2 Trees) and a violin in Shadow. I became so determined to see instruments that I even briefly mistook the canvas in Painting on an Island (despite the rather obvious clue in the title) for a piano being tinkled beneath an ivory moon.

Peter Doig owns Boscoe Holder's 1969 portrait of The Mighty Sparrow so, quite clearly, music features in his life almost as strongly as art does. The way he's titled his work (there's only a couple of Untitleds) reminds me of the joy musical artists seem to derive from choosing song names but there's also something about his paintings that, like music, strive to tell a story but not one with a strict narrative.

Or, sometimes, no narrative whatsoever! They're open to interpretation. Doig has given clues and suggested moods but it's up to you to choose your own adventure. Is the young woman lying on the beach in Night Bathers a holiday maker enjoying some well earned rest and relaxation or a local taking a brief nap before returning to work? What's the dynamic between the officially dressed pusher of the wheelchair and the distinguished looking gentlemen in said chair? Why is a skeletal man staring, seemingly intensely even though we can't see his face, across the water to the lighthouse?

Night Bathers (2019)

Hololo Mountain Road (2019)

Painting on an Island (Carrera) (2019)

We don't know. We can't know. It seems quite likely that Peter Doig's not even sure. In giving us such ambiguous images he's created something of beauty for an age where we like our identities bespoke and by suffusing them with such colour he's keeping the Instagram generation happy too. All of which could suggest a trivial artist beloved of corporate galleries and dilettantes but not one that will stand the test of time. It awaits to be seen if there's any truth in that but I'm willing to put it out there and asset that I think Doig's work will remain popular for many years to come. People always want stories and Peter Doig is giving them the chance to make their own. He is, in some ways, Doig it for the kids!

Shadow (2019)

Bather (Night Wave) (2019)