‘Hitch Hiker’, 1989-90
Oil on postal bags

‘Milky Way’ 1989-90
Oil on canvas

‘Ski Jacket’, 1994

Approaching the surface of a Peter Doig painting is a tense experience. In certain cases fear prompts speculation that the sumptuous epic description, at distance, may not live up to expectation close to, or in others, quite the opposite: sublime details within murky glades and candy mountain slopes serve as a means of re-entry into disorienting vistas. The major tension in any of the eight rooms designated for this extraordinary survey, however, is undoubtedly that between Doig’s figures and the landscape.

The people in these paintings – whether relegated to blink-and-you-might-mistake-them-for-exuberant-gestural-spillage-or-geographical-detritus bit parts, interloper presence, or the main compositional feature – rarely feel like the focus of the pictorial narrative. His ability to describe environments as palpable human states is akin to the literary notion of pathetic fallacy. But the same cannot be said in the case of their studies, the inclusion of which makes for a divergent exhibition that will cause even those familiar with Doig’s work to question what they think they know about these paintings.

The emotional intensity of these works makes it easy to forget that most presented here are derived from photos. The first room of early paintings, some completed during Doig’s MA at Chelsea, sets up a mythical proposition about the artist. The abundance of Canadian references they provide, viewed in tandem with the gallery text that describes his practice as outside the process-led painting of the early nineties, could lead one to presume the artist was compositionally working through some internal battle as ‘other’ (born in Edinburgh, Doig spent most of his youth in Canada). In this context, the woodcut lore of 1990 painting ‘Art School’, all crudely configured lumberjacks, beaver-gremlins and large-scale ruler in the foreground, appears reactionary in its allegorical stance.

While it’s true that Doig’s particular focus on the landscape differed wildly from the work of his college peers, his relationship to the subject, at this educational juncture and beyond, might just as easily be based on a reflexive response to second hand imagery as particular connection with a given place. ‘Jetty’ (1994), an apocalyptic khaki coloured realm within which a spatially dwarfed figure traverses a disconnected platform, is partially obscured by a Prussian blue column of pointillist marks. The suffocating sense of contamination could signify the advent of biological disaster, symbolise a state of being, or simply describe a quirk of the image’s printed source. Such complex visual moments characterise the beguiling quality of these paintings and Doig’s consummate manipulation of the visual library of art historical techniques at his disposal.

‘Jetty’, 1994

‘Concrete Cabin II’, 1992

There is, as one might expect from such a comprehensive survey, other evidence of material and conceptual battles being had on canvas. The ‘Concrete Cabin’ (1992) works (one of which recently featured in the Hayward’s ‘Painting of Modern Life’) that present Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation building through a screen of trees, sets up a modernism vs. naturalism debate as pertinent to the effects of utopian ideals on society as modes of artistic expression. Within this scene – a defunct housing unit surrounded by evidence of nature undeterred – the ideological monument is relegated in purpose to mere architectural backdrop, while the visceral white slap of paint marks on pine trunks creates an ocular surface tension that effectively disables any pretence of compositional advantage.

As descriptions or representations of ‘real’ places that appear to echo mental states, the presence of people can either determine or become an obstacle to the way one experiences the view. With a single turn of the head, the disparity between the glittery dots denoting miniscule mountain skiers, a girl in a tree and a messianic canoeist alerts one to the Google Map shift in scale between works. The larger figures often appear constructed out of a sense of material struggle. At points, the ludicrous crudity of facial details against such emotive backdrops can feel like a personal affront – a deliberate distraction from the epic whole. In some cases one might overlook such unresolved minutiae, in others the clumsiness seems too deliberate not to have some narrative significance. The Munchian horror-film resonance of ‘Girl in White with Trees’ (2001-02), for example, is all but cancelled out by the stick-person characterisation of the child’s face.

‘Girl in White with Trees,’ 2001-2002

For the most part, though, these works are utterly absorbing to the point where one almost forgets the notion of curatorial design. Until, that is, room 5, chock full of works on paper, when one might experience the bungee-cord effect of chronology. Having glided through the first half show, being knocked out by one large canvas after another, there may be a tendency to want to press on to the most recent works with the idea of returning to the room of studies. Mistake, for this Aladdin’s Cave of mark making provides an essential visual pause between the familiar and the less well-known pieces – a point at which to connect the processes of making and experiencing these works.

Naturally, the smaller scale and temporality of the materials make for less obviously conceived images, but little in the previous rooms prepares one for the loose, skilful execution with which most of them have been made. Especially where the figure is concerned. Despite the many art historical reminders along the route, there is nothing contrived or technically clunky about Doig’s stylistic experimentation. Being in the privileged position of being able to equate a study with it’s larger other, one can feel the alchemical connection between raw action and distilled masterwork. It’s clear from the timeline that individual areas of Doig’s technique have developed over others. Scrubby, seductively half-finished portraits of gents in toppers describe the shift in the latest body of paintings – made and mostly concerned with his home, Trinidad – towards a suffused, undone aesthetic.

‘Gasthof zur Muldentalsperre’, 2000-02

Doig’s relationship with the landscape has covered many views from or references to different terrain. Still, the effect of standing in a room of, by contrast elementally humid new paintings, given the now iconic status of his glacial hinterlands, is like the sensory experience of hot chocolate over ice cream. These images – of bleached-out beings clinging to trees and dark river scenes – aren’t windows on tropical paradise, but from their thin, uncluttered grounds it feels as though many past concerns have been literally washed away.

Rebecca Geldard

Peter Doig
Until 27 April
Tate Britain