‘Snow falls into the centre of Doig’s memory project. More than a phenomenon to be remembered like any other memory, it becomes a candidate for the generic idea of memory.’ Richard Shif, Peter Doig, New York, 2011, p. 331 Pieter Bruegel, Hunters in the Snow, oil on wood, 1565, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Bridgeman Images.
Building on notions of reverie and nostalgia, the present composition transforms into a mesmeric dreamscape. Through methods of mirroring and doubling, Doig invites the viewer to examine the distinctions between reality and representation, and to enter the liminal space held at the junction of both. The barren tree fragmenting centre of the composition’s plane participates in achieving this paradoxical, dual tableau; reminiscent of Barnett Newman’s infamous zip, it produces two peripheral spaces within a single composition. ‘The mirroring opened up another world. It went from being something like a recognisable reality to something more magical’, Doig explained (Peter Doig, quoted in Judith Nesbit, ‘A Suitable Distance’, Peter Doig, exh. cat., Tate Britain, London, 2001, p. 14). Just as abstraction and fguration are at play in the present work, a tension between nature and man-made structures seems to arise, where snow furries and organic agents encroach on the main house at the composition’s centre. ‘I always wanted a landscape to be humanised by a person or a building, at least something that suggests habitation’ (Peter Doig, quoted in Adrian Searle, Peter Doig, London, 2007, p.
16). At once threatening and inviting, the house portrayed in the present composition is kept doorless and windowless, closed of from the viewer. As Doig isolates the cabin and renders it literally impenetrable, the structure is made all-themore ghostly, summoning an invisible breath that permeates both its walls and surroundings. A group of anonymous silhouettes gathered at the forefront of the composition emphasises this tension. Diametrically opposed, they present an image that is akin to that projected by a warped or fallacious mirror. An exquisite example of Peter Doig’s expert handling of the painterly medium, Slushy Landscape (with fgures) evinces the qualities that heralded Doig as one of the greatest painters of his generation. Existing in an in-between space where reality, memory and imagination are one, the present work invites us into Doig’s distinctively ethereal world, and demonstrates his ability to ‘suggest retrospection and nostalgia and make-believe’ through the captivating theme of snow, as deployed in the most acclaimed of his works (Peter Doig, quoted in Paul Bonaventura, ‘A Hunter in the Snow’, Artefactum, No. 9, 1994, p. 12).