Peter DOIG – a long-prepared eruption…

Peter DOIG’s large-format paintings are among the most sought-after on the Contemporary art market. In May 2015, Christie’s included one of his works in its Looking Forward to the Past sale alongside masterpieces by Picasso, Giacometti, Rothko, Monet and Warhol, a fact that clearly reflects the market’s esteem for this Scottish artist’s work.

Born in 1959 in Edinburgh, Doig studied art in London (Wimbledon, Saint Martin’s and then Chelsea). In 1994 he was short-listed for the famous (and controversial) Turner Prize, and although the prize was finally attributed to the sculptor Antony Gormley, his nomination generated considerable public exposure.

The same year, he joined Victoria Miro’s London gallery and subsequently enjoyed a series of exhibitions in major Western cities: Berlin in 1995, Berkeley, Saint Louis and Miami in 2000, then Vancouver and Toronto in 2001. The Michael Werner Gallery subsequently became involved and organised a first show in 2002. Werner’s is one of the best addresses in New York, capable of projecting artists into the international limelight. Peter DOIG was 43 at the time.

In 2005, already considered a master painter, he was invited to teach at the Dusseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, where Paul KLEE, Gerhard RICHTER and Anselm Kieferhad taught before him. Meanwhile, he obtained support from Charles Saatchi, former advertising mogul become eminent art collector and one of the most influential figures on the British art scene. Saatchi integrated Peter DOIG into his The Triumph of Painting exhibition at his sumptuous Chelsea gallery, alongside a number of other rising stars of Contemporary painting, including Martin KIPPENBERGER and Daniel Richter.

During the show, his canvas Briey (Concrete cabin) (1994-96) fetched $632,000 in New York (Christie’s, 11 May 2005). The result was exceptional since the same work had been acquired in November 2000 in the same auction room for $160,000, thus generating a 295% return on investment in five years. After that, the prices of Doig’s works started to soar.

The following year another Doig painting crossed the million-dollar threshold and then in 2007, White Canoe (1990-91) fetched $11.2 million, the ultimate market consecration, and making Doig the most expensive living European artist.

In 2008, a retrospective show toured Europe, starting at the Tate Britain, and then migrating to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. A few years later, the exhibition No Foreign Land – bringing together early works and archives – was shown in two cities dear to his heart: Edinburgh, his birthplace, and Montreal, the city where he spent time as a young painter developing his style.

The extraordinary momentum of Doig’s care-er has recently been confirmed beyond all doubt: on 11 May of this year, Christie’s offered one of his most famous paintings, Swamped (1990), in its ultra-prestigious Looking Forward to the Past sale. The work fetched $25.9 million. Swamped, which shows a white canoe floating on the surface of a lake surrounded by lush autumnal colours, could be likened to Monet’s Nymphéas. And yet the work was apparently inspired by the final scene of Sean Cunningham’s horror film,Friday the 13th, after Doig photographed the scene on his TV screen. The canoe, a symbol of passage and by metonymy, of death, is one of Doig’s emblematic themes, and one that he has constantly reinterpreted since the end of the 1980s and a favourite with the collectors.

Already in 2002, Swamped fetched Peter DOIG’s auction record of $455,000 at Sotheby’s in London. Since then its price has multiplied by 57 times. In just 13 years, Peter DOIG has become a veritable icon of Contemporary painting.