Shadow
‘Shadow’ (2019) by Peter Doig, courtesy the artist
In the flamboyant world of Trinidadian calypso, ‘Mighty Shadow’(Winston McGarland Bailey, also known simply as ‘Shadow’) was a celebrated eccentric. On stage, typically dressed in dark cape and wide-brimmed hat, often wearing a black outfit embellished with a white skeleton, he would perform standing still or in jerky movements, his deep voice suggestive of vulnerability and unease. His songs combined social commentary with humour, personal frailty, and odd fantasies. A favourite musician of Peter Doig, Shadow is the subject of several of his paintings.
Doig’s pictorial world is one of flux; returning repeatedly to familiar motifs, his thoughts and feelings about them, expressed in a wide diversity of painterly marks and gestures, are in constant flow. The paintings in his recent exhibition at London’s Courtauld Gallery were in some respects works of transition, change and loss; painted and re-painted over a period of years, they are redolent of distance and sadness. Their nostalgia is uncomfortable; as one reviewer described it, ‘this was Doig grasping, reaching out, trying desperately, feverishly, to hold on to memories, and failing’. ‘Seeing that happen in paint’, the review went on, ‘is deeply affecting and very beautiful’.
It might be said that the underlying theme of Doig’s work has been a search for home, a quest to find out where he really belongs. Born in Scotland, he spent his early childhood in Trinidad before his parents settled in Canada; after studying at art college in London he lived there for some years, eventually going back to Trinidad with his young family. Now he is again living in London. Doig’s older paintings often depict people, places or stories in Canada; others are set in England; in the last two decades they have mainly been about life in Trinidad. Although successful and popular, Doig - like Shadow - remains something of an outsider, and the Courtauld Gallery show raised intriguing questions about where his art might most appropriately be positioned. Is it with contemporary painters (on many of whom he has been a significant influence) or with past masters like Manet, Monet, Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh, who formed the context for the exhibition? It is not coincidental that the predominant mood in Doig’s paintings is one of alienation; for all their colour, exoticism, and occasional intimacy, the majority of of his images are about displacement.
‘Third Culture Kids’, an awkward term coined in the 1950s, refers to children who have spent their formative years in countries that are not their parents’ permanent homes. Globalisation has made the phenomenon more common than it was; these children are mainly the offspring of expatriates, people who work and live abroad but don’t intend to settle or to emigrate permanently. Some come from transnational families or have been educated at an international school in their home countries. ‘Third Culture Kids’ tend to develop identities that are defined by relationships with people rather than with places, they are likely to speak more than one language, have a broader world view than that of many of their peers, and to be attuned to different cultures. Less fortunate, perhaps, is a congruent sense of rootlessness and restlessness; they are children who rarely feel truly at home anywhere, and this ‘imprinting’ is often carried over into adulthood.
The original ‘Third Culture Kids’ were forerunners of what is now a widespread phenomenon, the contemporary ‘liquid life’ about which the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman wrote eloquently and extensively. The spread of globalisation, its goal being the eradication of trade barriers and the creation of fluid international markets, has resulted in a transition from a world in which people are subject to the reliable laws and protection of their home countries to one where instability and disquiet have weakened human bonds and eroded social solidarity. Bauman was among the first to suggest that Western democracy has now become an élitist system which allows the rich to protect their interests and ensures that the less privileged continue to suffer from a lack of security and governmental support. Social ‘liquidity’, he said, is not a form of liberating emancipation that enables human potential, but a dangerous step backwards; it may be beneficial to some, but not to most. It is a shadow of true progress.
For further exploration:
An obituary of ‘Mighty Shadow’: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/30/mighty-shadow-obituary
‘Mighty Shadow’ performing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=2wgkm3IRyyM
An interesting interview with Peter Doig about his exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/feb/08/artist-peter-doig-cezanne-renoir-monet
A virtual tour of Peter Doig’s exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery: https://virtualtour.courtauld.ac.uk/peterdoig/
Third Culture Kids: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20161117-third-culture-kids-citizens-of-everywhere-and-nowhere
An introduction to Zygmunt Bauman: https://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-philosophie-2016-3-page-281.htm
Image on index page: detail of ‘Music Shop’ by Peter Doig, courtesy the artist; shown at the Courtauld Gallery
‘Alpinist’ (2022) by Peter Doig, courtesy the artist