Peter Doig: No Foreign Lands

by Hilton Als, Stephane Aquin, Keith Hartley

Peter Doig is well known for the exotic atmospheres and dreamy narratives that appear in his work. With an uncommonly rich color palette and a unique material sensibility, he has created some of the most resonant and evocative images in contemporary painting, placing him among the most inventive painters working today. But, as this extensive volume makes clear, he is also a sophisticated visual thinker, endlessly preoccupied with the process and history of painting. No Foreign Lands is the first publication to examine in depth the conceptual underpinnings of Doig’s oeuvre. Particular attention is given to the importance of motifs, themes and variations in his work, explored in over 200 paintings and works on paper from the past 13 years, among them new works never before published.Born in Edinburgh in 1959, Peter Doig was raised in Canada and spent two decades in London before moving to Trinidad, where he now lives and works. Doig graduated from St. Martin’s School of Art in 1983 and the Chelsea School of Art in 1990. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994, and was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. In February 2013, his painting "The Architect’s Home in the Ravine" sold for $12,000,000 at a London auction. The exhibition No Foreign Lands , which opened at the Scottish National Gallery before traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, showcases works created during the past ten years, much of which the artist spent in Trinidad. The Independent called the exhibition "a thrilling show," and The Observer praised it as "mesmerizing."

Genres: Art

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2013

About the author

Hilton Als is an American writer and theater critic who writes for The New Yorker magazine. Previously, he had been a staff writer for The Village Voice and editor-at-large at Vibe magazine.

His 1996 book The Women focuses on his mother, who raised him in Brooklyn, Dorothy Dean, and Owen Dodson, who was a mentor and lover of Als. In the book, Als explores his identification of the confluence of his ethnicity, gender and sexuality, moving from identifying as a "Negress" and then an "Auntie Man", a Barbadian term for homosexuals.

Als's 2013 book 'White Girls' continued to explore race, gender, identity in a series of essays about everything from the AIDS epidemic to Richard Pryor's life and work.

In 2000, Als received a Guggenheim fellowship for creative writing and the 2002–03 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. In 2004 he won the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, which provided him half a year of free working and studying in Berlin.

Als has taught at Smith College, Wesleyan, and Yale University, and his work has also appeared in The Nation, The Believer, and the New York Review of Books.

Reviews

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just recently discovered the paintings of Peter Doig, and he's quickly become my favorite contemporary painter.