Peter Doig

Peter Doig

Paragon

circa 2006

     An instant reminder of Paul Gauguin's The Vision after the Sermon (circa 1888). A glowing red centre, like fire, separating one thing from another (which in this case is ground, so green, from water); lazy leaves bending into the frame from the top; and an odd trio of human beings, one of whom seems to be a ghost. Unlike Gauguin's group of devout Christians passively watching the struggle between Jacob and the angel, Doig's characters interact with each other. They remain unbothered by the red degree of division, and yet they are, in fact, part of the division. The upper body of the foremost leans into the greenery (thus 'connecting' the trio with land) while the farthest almost disappears with the current, and yet firmly stands on a surface. The middle figure, though obviously holding a cricket stick, could additionally be 'pointing' to something, but to what?

     Their line cuts the canvas in two, receding into the distance and pulling the eye to the valley beyond where a blue sky peeps through, nearly touching the marble-grey waters. Everything in this scene appears to melt, to merge, but at the same time remain independent of each other. On second thought, are the three characters one in the same person? From different angles does the figure twirl and twist - first with his back to us, then in profile and finally in full frontal? Is this a process of growth whereby life is treated like a game, where at each new stage we learn to hold and master a different tool? If so, then the last most 'mature' figure supposedly half-floating, half-standing is the ideal prototype of adulthood. He has merged with both land and water, and with the division between both things itself. A true paragon?

Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian

Chrysanthemum

circa 1908-09

     It is like a head of tossled hair, maybe a little boy's, whose curls run off in as many odd and weird directions as does his imagination. Can one really see the face of a child, of whomever a child will grow up to be? Not really. The face of this little boy is therefore obscured. He is lost in tangles of things that, only at this age, he can enjoy without the burden of knowing what they actually mean, or what damage or joy they would bring to his adult life. Laughing them away as mere thoughts, as ideas that he will probably be indifferent to after a minute or two, are a child's remedy to passing time. In and out of holes created by an immature mind gives children the glazed look of serenity. A sudden silence or an outburst of energy seems only childish to grown-ups, but with the amount children do not understand and yet see and feel at the same time, their 'childish' behaviour is actually surprisingly subdued. 
     If we, the so-called ''adults'', place our adult minds in that of a child we would explode. The pressures a child takes without realising - those that grown-ups normally experience, dissolve into or even over-analyse to points of depression or comfort or instability - weigh down and test prematurely the child's strengths. These pressures mould us from day one, whether we know it or not. Like buds we bloom but never truly re-bloom; we stretch ourselves slowly outwards, unable to really stop or revisit a fetal position of safety, until, as elderly people, we soon find ourselves fully splayed and naked to world, about to leave it. Like this Chrysanthemem we try to hold our heads high to the end, but in truth every one of us is the same child with tossled hair - observing, looking, but lacking any clue as to what is really going on in the world we see.

Rik Wouters

Rik Wouters

Baby with Blue Cap

circa 1911

     With its eyes slightly enlarged and its posture a bit too straight, Wouters is able to animate a two-dimensional pastel portrait with a touch of real childish 'bounce'. Clouded in a puffy garment of light pinks and many blues, topped with an over-sized blue-bell knit hat and anchored to the spot in front of a wave of quivering wallpaper the child sits attentively. Like a flower stalk its feeds off of the sunlight; off of whatever is the most interesting thing in the room. It cranes its head here and there, stopping at this point to observe whatever muse the artist placed to its left to keep it transfixed for a long enough time. We can see the hasty stick-work, the spots where Wouters scrubbed the raw chunk of pastel (or pigmented chalk?) onto the canvas, leaving a rough rectangular imprint to make up for the child's creased sleeve or pattern, or for its little hands and chin.

     It is interesting to think that their roles - that of the artist and of the sitter - are reversed in this situation. Babies are often erratic and tempermental but in this case, while the child was caught in a moment of stillness, it was actually Wouters who was apparently stung by a burst of energy. His hand work varies dramatically across the portrait (compare the rough blue backdrop to the baby's flesh) and in some areas he even neglected to finish details. His attention, like the baby's, was clearly drawn to one point. For both it was a moment of interest, but it is probably for only one that this moment was remembered later in life.