Peter Doig: Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa

by Richard Shiff (Contributor), Peter Doig (Artist), Milovan Farronato (Contributor)

This exquisitely designed monograph of new works by Scottish painter Peter Doig (born 1959) is published for an exhibition at the Palazzetto Tito, Venice, at which Doig debuted recent large-scale and small-scale works.
This slim volume, with its printed slipcase, vellum jacket, five gatefold pages and superb reproductions printed on a substantial paper that allows the images to really shine, shows the intimate, quiet but colorful intensity of Doig's art to great effect. The imagery in the new works is diverse, drawing on private and found visual sources, and sometimes repeating (as in the image of the lion that appears on the book's jacket). The book documents the Palazzetto Tito exhibition with shots of the works installed in the Palazzetto's beautiful historic rooms alongside reproductions of the paintings.

50 pages, Paperback

First published September 27, 2016

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Like many of the artist's referential titles, 'Rain in the Port of Spain' includes a parenthetical subtitle, 'White Oak'. This is the brand name of a white rum popular in Trinidad, which recently began distributing advertising posters featuring a yellow background even more brilliant than the color applied to the walls of the jail. Yell links this consumer product - the official rum for Trinidad Carnival 2015 - to the prison and the lion. The White Oak ad campaign features a slogan with a rather silly pun: "When it [the rum] pours, you reign" - an inverted play on the adage, "when it rains, it pours." The statement exchanges a traditional expression of negativity for a positive benefit: drink our rum, and you will reign over a kingdom of sensory pleasure. The slogan acquires unexpected potency in relation to Doig's imagery, for, as "king of beasts, the lion "reigns" (like the heraldic lion of Judah). And the lion can effectively reign only if released from the prison of its cage."