27 September - 22 December
New Paintings
Michael Werner Gallery, Mayfair
22 Upper Brook Street
www.michaelwerner.com
www.michaelwerner.com
I've come up the heavy dark oak staircase, after pushing
through a heavy dark alarmed and ornamented metal door, and in this transformed
old Mayfair mansion I hear the soft accent of a dealer telling some collectors:
‘Oh, there’s smaller ones upstairs’. Clever, I think, this blonde, congenial
guy is really business-minded.
It’s a gorgeous early autumn morning in London and warm
sunlight comes streaming in through large floor-to-ceiling windows. But I'm feeling absolutely cold and numbed by the paintings. What were they about? I'm hard pressed to describe a direction or tone to the work, besides the fact that
it seemed focused on a sense of line, shape, colour and repetition of motifs. These are, however,
formalist qualities, and what I've always valued about Doig in the past has
been the fact that the paintings have surpassed ‘mere’ technical proficiency
and felt more significant, more full with emotion and revealing of profound
symbolisms, even possessing an otherworldly quality.
Where are the guts, the heavy atmospheres, the sense of
being able to feel the very air of the scene? I long to be able to step into
these scenes of strange nostalgia, entranced by the heady sense of place. There
is a meandering use of painterly skill in composition and shape here, but these
works lack conviction, urgency and mysticism.
I guess with great painters come great expectations. And why not? If you believe that art matters to the world, then we have to be severely disappointed when confronted with evidence to the contrary.
I guess with great painters come great expectations. And why not? If you believe that art matters to the world, then we have to be severely disappointed when confronted with evidence to the contrary.
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| Smaller works on paper in upstairs space |
I agree with you, Jessica, these works don't seem to have the same glowing mysticism of his earlier work. What I have always admired in Doig's paintings is his union of rawness + layers of laborious handling, which complicates them. These pieces seem to fall a bit "thin" in that sense, raw without the same lingering investment... Maybe I'll have to go and see them for myself and decide! I must say, the works on paper look a bit goofy clustered in the shiny silver frames. But, I do love Doig's work, he's still got his style. Thanks for sharing!
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