Peter Doig's New Exhibition Fuses Painting and Music

""It's always puzzling to visit the homes of extremely sophisticated contemporary artists (or collectors), and discover that their taste in music consists of uninformed wank," wrote Neel Brown in Frieze in 1998. He was reviewing Blizzard Seventy-Seven, Peter Doig 's first institutional survey at London's Whitechapel Gallery, for which curator Matthew Higgs had appended a catalogue of the artist's record collection for the show's publication."

"At the time, Doig was breaking through as a painter: shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1994, and exhibiting with Victoria Miro in London and Gavin Brown's Enterprise in New York. His slow, atmospheric paintings of remembered places - from the snowscapes of his Canadian upbringing to his 'Concrete Cabin' paintings of Le Corbusier 's modernist housing complex in Briey - stood apart from the theatrics of the YBAs, placing him outside the prevailing currents of the decade."

""But Doig's taste is not wank," Brown concluded. "It's a medium-cool collection - no MOR, Marks-and-Spencer rock like U2 or Sting, but an eclectic mix of classic and left-field rock with a high percentage of indie." The catalogue listed Doig's cassettes, compact discs, 12-inch vinyl and 7-inch singles in full, exposing an aesthetic sensibility that, as Brown put it, "makes vulnerable and securely bonds the compiler within the safe codes of a sub-group.""

Peter Doig emerged as a painter in the 1990s, shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1994 and exhibiting with Victoria Miro and Gavin Brown's Enterprise in London and New York. His slow, atmospheric paintings evoke remembered places, from Canadian snowscapes to the 'Concrete Cabin' studies of Le Corbusier's Briey housing complex, positioning him apart from YBA theatrics. A detailed catalogue of Doig's records revealed an eclectic, 'medium‑cool' collection mixing funk, rock, reggae, hip‑hop, soul and electronic music. Doig encountered Kraftwerk during his professorship at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (2004–2017). Computer Love and Aretha Franklin's Jump to It featured among his Desert Island Discs selections.

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