Doig and Homesickness: A Memory from the City

I was quickly finding the situation to be more than I had bargained for. It was my first week in Chicago for an early college program at the School of the Art Institute, and I was already longing to be home. I was swamped with projects and startled by the coldness of my professors, and I began to experience frustration with what I loved so much—my art. I felt out of place among a bunch of kids from art high schools and large cities, people who intrigued me, but who I could find little common ground with, being from a tiny Christian school in East Tennessee. I was growing increasingly lonely… and tired. It was a hot June afternoon in the city, and my class was trekking together over to the museum to sketch, analyze, and (above all) marvel at the work in the new Modern Wing. I was grateful for some time to take a break from my own projects and just unwind while surrounding myself with the treasures it held within, beautiful work molded by the hands of brilliant artists from all over the globe. I found myself so fascinated by the unusual installations, and thrilled to find an exhibit by Eva Hesse (one of my favorites). But one work of art especially caught me by surprise. It was not a very controversial piece like many of the surrounding works. It was simply beautiful. It was Doig’s Gasthof zur Muldentalsperre, a piece I had not even heard of before, but something about the depth of the blue oil filled me with a sense of magic. Two whimsical figures looked out at me from an otherwise deserted land of paint; a quiet, desolate place one might have considered lonely, but one that made me feel understood in my own loneliness, therefore expelling it all together. The work transported me into a fantastic world and I seemed to find myself posing there alongside the figures by the gate, surrounded by empty blue waters and limitless stars and yet somehow filled with a sense of companionship. The peacefulness of the scene seemed to remind me of a dear memory whose specifics I could not recall; it struck me with a vivid sense of familiarity to something which I could not pin down. The deep, tender calm of the scene brought me to a place where I had felt such a peace myself—home.


I was instantly attracted to the deep prussian blue that composes the body of water and permeates the glowing yellow sky in the painting. Many formal elements of the work, such as described by Horowitz, give the image its power, but Doig’s use of color in the piece seems to be one of the most vital to its mystery and intrigue. The dark, powerful sweep of color pulls the viewer into the scene, and sparkles of vivid, whimsical color guides his eye toward the focal point: the unusually-dressed men in the center of the composition. The volume achieved through the use of these colors makes the scene especially eerie, and wonderfully so, with the color gradient of blue lightening and blurring off into the distant horizon and deepening toward the forefront, contrasting the brightly lit stone walls and serving to somewhat isolate the men’s figures. The painting texture is marked by vague and sketchy, yet soft and delicate lines, reminiscent of how one might envision a hazy memory. Ghostly trees blur into the background, as gate and central figures are more defined by the unblended lines. The vast spaces of the water, earth, and sky make the men seem small, but at the same time allow the viewer’s eyes to be drawn into the gate opening up to him and focus on these men. They do not have to be large in the scene for their presence to be profound. In fact, the expanse around them seems to make their strange little figures all the more curious and prominent. The mystery created by these such formal elements gives the painting much of its intrigue, leaving the viewer to wonder just why these odd little men are doing together in such a place.

The magical, dreamlike quality of the painting drew me into its fantasy, the shapes and colors enraptured me, and the subject found me where I was. For as I read that the figures in the image were of the artist and one of his companions, dressing up in these characters on a whim, I realized that the image was equally as compelling as the story behind it. Doig took a picture of him and him friend in which they had posed after going to a play, and painted their figures into a scene from an antique postcard. He created a world around them in which they could escape; he took a fond memory of a moment of friendship, a simple moment of profound joy, a moment of deep happiness and connection with a person whom he valued and gave the memory a deserving home inside a beautifully haunting image; and he shared the beauty of that connection by extending an idealized image of it to his audience, effectively using formal painting techniques to communicate the emotion of the memory.