Baked 1990

Editor: Here we have Peter Doig's "Baked," from 1990, an oil painting that feels… claustrophobic, maybe? The dominance of red and the tight composition create a certain unease, but there’s a formal beauty to it, too. What jumps out at you when you look at it? Curator: Indeed, it's the orchestration of colour and texture that immediately arrests the eye. Notice the granular quality of the paint application, a meticulous layering that creates an almost palpable sense of depth. How does the restricted palette – primarily crimson, umber, and near-black – contribute to the overall reading of the piece? Editor: I think it amplifies the sense of… intensity? Like something is simmering beneath the surface. It also flattens the space, makes it hard to discern what's in the foreground versus background. Curator: Precisely. Observe how Doig eschews traditional perspective, favouring instead a shallow picture plane achieved through tonal consistency. This disrupts conventional spatial relationships. How does this manipulation of depth, or lack thereof, affect your interpretation of the "landscape" as a landscape? Editor: It feels less like a landscape and more like an emotional state, a feeling projected onto a scene. It’s almost abstract, despite the presence of the boat and the suggestion of land. Curator: An astute observation. Consider, too, the formal relationship between the verticality of the boat’s mast and the horizontality of the implied horizon line. This interplay introduces a subtle tension, further destabilising the reading of a traditional landscape. It is this disruption that defines much of Doig’s output, using the familiar to explore the ambiguous. Editor: That tension really comes alive when you focus on those relationships between line and color. It’s been illuminating to explore this painting through the lens of its formal components. Curator: Agreed. By considering these elements, one unlocks further possibilities when examining other works by this artist and more broadly when visiting an exhibition such as this one.