Peter Doig Talks about Sigmar Polke's use of Popular Imagery

In an article in the Tate Etc, in 2014, Peter Doig talks to Mark Godfrey about Sigmar Polke and mentions how the German Artist has influenced his approach to source material for his work. Doig refers to an exhibition, A New Spirit in Painting from 1981, that was held at the Royal Academy, a show that was very influential in forming Doig's methodology:

"I felt much more connected to Polke because of his use of popular imagery in a kind of witty irreverent way, and that he was prepared to use all types of visual language in his own work, unlike Richter who would be painting paintings that looked like photographs." (page 59)

Still from one of Polke's 16mm Films

Doig talks about his first experiences of seeing Polke's 16mm films first shown in Hamburg, some of which were appearing in the exhibition at the Tate:

"I was surprised by the way the camera operated like an eye examining everything in an almost uncomfortable voyeuristic fashion, details of faces, watching people."

Doig is acknowledging the use of film as a tool to examine and gather material and how it surprised him. Potential this may have been in an unsettling way based upon the content of the film, that showed bear-baiting in Afghanistan. But he goes on to say in the interview that he doesn't feel Polke used this, or such, footage in his work rather that the source material for Polke's later work was from contemporary newspapers, magazines and the internet.

Doig doesn't talk of this range of eclectic source material disparagingly. In fact he seems engaged by this use of media and his exposure to this at an important stage of his development, as a painter, will have shored up his own ideas of where he gathered his own inspirations.

Bibliography

FISCHIL, P. & DOIG, P. & GODFREY, M. A Contemporary Visionary, Tate Etc. Issue 32 Autumn 2014,  Tate Media, UK

The Humanity in Using Photography for Painting - Gerhard Richter

In 2011 John-Paul Stonard writes about Gerhard Richter, in the Magazine Tate Inc., as he contemplates how the German artist handles his source material, his use of 'snaps' and images cut from illustrated West German Magazines:

Part of October 18, 1977 Series - Gerhard Richter

"Richter holds all of his sources at arm's length. He is never exhorting us to think this way or that."

He cites a series of paintings from 1977, dealing with the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group, that used newspaper photographs as source material. Each is a blurred yet a photo real image that removes much of the narrative yet the subject is profound. The exact meaning of these is known to many who understand the political situation of the time and yet there are more who do not know the cultural reference. There exists an element of ambiguity.

Richter's choice of image for these paintings is based upon his reaction to the original article from which he took them, and the political environment of the time. In some respects he is trying to reproduce an atmosphere, rather than necessarily make a statement, which is partly evident through his removal of the lettering that originally punctuated the striking photographs.

Part of October 18, 1977 Series - Gerhard Richter

There is an air of uncertainty, a visual language that is primitive, and we understand on some level what this is and how it could in real life, and does in reflection, make us feel. This is perhaps the message that Richter wants to carry forward and part of his source. His original selection of the images for these paintings is also about him translating his feelings through duplicating the environment at the time and then their interpretation.

Richter also stays close to the original image's photographic make-up for this form of journalistic photograph also carries with it a voyeuristic element that only such photography can achieve and then allow us to literally witness something as if a crime scene. These powerful elements also exist in the work and bind the meanings.

On a deeper level Stonard states that Richter views photographs as 'natural things' and that they open a window onto nature. That nature consists of everything including humans and through photography you can gain direct access to nature and that Richter was a innovator in this area of the contemporary art world. The October 18, 1977 paintings we are witness to this. The results are harsh and visceral and we share in their humanity and nature.

STONARD, J-P, (2011) Inescapable Truths, Tate Etc. Issue 23, Autumn 2011, Tate Media, UK

Atmosphere in my Paintings

Peter Doig in his interview with Martin Gayford (2015) talks about his painting once he'd moved to the West Indies;
 
"My paintings started changing, they started becoming influenced by my being there."
 
He comments about a recent painting of the interior of his studio in Trinidad and says;
 
"There is nothing tropical about the painting, but something about it is Trinidadian."
 
This is clearly a reference to the atmosphere that he conjures up in his paintings. I'm interested in how the atmosphere is created in my paintings by me actually being in the field before the final still is decided upon. This is a split second I take from the video footage to paint, and as I paint I very much want to feel that moment again, the essence of the place. I ideally, very much like Doig does with his paintings, want to place the viewer in a voyeuristic position where they themselves  experience the atmosphere of the moment.
 
I don't think that this can necessarily be achieved by working from a photograph, one that has been posed rather than a moment from a film. There is something about grabbing a still from a film sequence that makes it transitional. There is a split second where the image is going to change

Current painting I've just finished - March 2016

and often the clarity of the mark or the objects within the frame is diminished or blurred as if incomplete in some way or wrong.
 
The lens of the video camera therefore becomes very much like the human eye because a photographer framing his photograph has a time to consider its composition and cannot group

together a whole series of images like a film to construct the environment that it is trying to capture.
 
Also because of the location, the fields of my landscape, the pictures do appear very English and seasonal as the land changes and we experience change through the painting. This is what's Doig is talking about with his Trinidadian paintings that the changes of environment are present in what he does and the atmosphere that he experiences he then translates into paint. How much subconscious input into this must vary but there is no doubt it is there especially as time passes and weautomatically simulate the palette of the landscape.

Bibliography

GAYFORD, M. (2015) Memory Traces, Apollo Art Magazine, New York

Peter Doig on Using Photography in his Work

In May 2015 Martin Gayford writes comprehensively about Peter Doig's latest exhibition and interviews the artist who makes a number of refined comments about his processes, these clarified statements are perhaps more honed then when he previously talked about this subject matter.

Doig talks about the use of photography in painting:

"Photography has been used as a tool for painting for many years. It fed off painting and vice versa."

He acknowledges the heritage of photography in the sense that early work was very much about replicating the style of painting and how the medium of photography was influenced in this way. That now it is used by many painters. He goes on to say:

"But to me it's more interesting when it's not about simply copying, or making photorealism. You see so many people using the photographic world in painting, and I would say that 90 percent of the time it's so mundane. How do you transcend that?"

Doig is saying here that the process of using a photographic image in your work is something of a trap. The ease of simply copying an image can become mundane, potentially predictable. The straight copy of a photo would replicate the photograph and what does this achieve? He's not ruling every such image as mundane more that there is a higher chance of it being so if you do a straight copy. His vision of transcending is the question of how do you escape this? How can you capture more meaning or value in the work when the original photograph has done that already?

He is of course putting himself in this position. His work he is saying could be mundane but he goes on to explain how he escapes this, or tries when he uses photography in his work.

"The photography is an aid really. If I relied totally on my own drawing, my work would be very, very slow and very, very stiff because I'd have to square up."

He is highlighting the convenience of photography and Gayford describes his process as 'subtle and elusive'. Doig goes on to describe some of the finer aspects of the photograph that attracts him:

"Also, in photography, you can sometimes see body language, or a particular silhouette, but to see this in real life would be difficult because it's momentary."

This is what we see in Doig's paints; something captured in a moment. There is no doubt a sense the image is in transition, the people and places caught when they lease expected or the location a scene from the side of a road as you drive by. Some aspects of the shadow are unreal and it's this unreal, although obvious contradictory, aspect of the photo that he seems to be drawn to. He finishes this statement of using photography:

"I'm sure at some time I probably have painted a whole scene from a photograph, but it's very rare. At the moment I'm using just figures, or an element of a face."

Doig looks beyond the frame of the photo and sees it as a place where can extract detail and use it in any way he likes. This is typical Doig who is not afraid to use a vast range of sources for his work. He runs on instinct and produces what Gayford calls a 'complex metamorphosis of the images.'.

Bibliography

GAYFORD, M. (2015) Memory Traces, Apollo Art Magazine, New York