Peter Doig is one of those painters loved by the public and the cognoscenti alike. His vivid palette and the magic realism of paintings like White Canoe 1991 have brought him to a wide and varied audience, and his work fetches some of the highest prices for any contemporary painter. Born in Edinburgh, he has lived in Montreal and Toronto. More recently, he spent some twenty years in Trinidad, where he ran a cinema club, before returning in 2021 to set up his studio in London.
House of Music, his current show at the Serpentine South Gallery, is something of a departure for someone known primarily as a figurative painter. The whole exhibition forms one large installation in which, for the first time, music is used alongside painting to explore his relationship with sound system culture and cinema, an interest developed during his Trinidad years. The title refers to the lyrics of Dat Soca Boat by Shadow, a Trinidadian Calypso musician, whom Doig admires and with whom he’s worked in the past. Chosen from his vast collection of vinyl records and cassettes, put together over the years, the music selected provides a background soundtrack in the gallery similar to that which he plays in the studio while painting. Music has long been a fundamental influence, and going into the studio to make paintings is, he says, similar to going into a studio to record music; both involve an element of chance. ‘Songs can be very visual, ’ he says. ‘I’m interested in what they conjure, and I’ve tried over the years to make paintings that are imagistic and atmospheric in the way music can be.’
Two pairs of towering analogue speakers dominate the galleries. Designed in the mid-twentieth century for large auditoria and cinemas, they’ve been carefully restored after being salvaged from derelict cinemas across the UK by Laurence Passera, an enthusiast for vintage cinematic sound systems, with whom Doig has previously collaborated. Tracks selected by the artist from his vast collection play daily through a pair of original ‘high fidelity’ 1950s wooden Klangfilm Euronor speakers. A massive Western Electric and Bell Labs sound system was created, originally, to meet the demands of the first talking movies, stands like a towering sculptural shrine to 20th-century culture in the central gallery and is activated daily by guest musicians and artists who play selections from their own collections. This multi-sensory environment transforms the gallery into a vast listening space that encourages visitors to linger and engage with the work on the walls, fostering dialogue through shared listening, the exploration of memories and diverse cultural experiences. Dreamy, textured paintings saturated with colour intertwine with the musicscapes to create an immersive experience. At the same time, sofas and recliners dotted around the gallery invite the viewer to relax and suck up the atmosphere.
Memories and old photographs are used to trigger ideas so that each painting implicitly tells a story. Some honour musicians’ performances, such as Embah in Paris, 2017, or people dancing as in Fall in New York (Central Park) 2002-2012. Among the most effective paintings in the exhibition are three large-scale, dream-like paintings depicting lions roaming through the streets of Port of Spain, Trinidad. These mighty beasts, wandering in unlikely urban settings, have a strange, magical magnificence about them. The vivid colours and hazy atmosphere transport us immediately to the Caribbean. A symbol of Rastafarianism, the Lion of Judah (a title given to Haile Selassie I, the onetime Emperor of Ethiopia) is considered an emblem of pride, resistance and sovereignty, its mane being synonymous with the distinctive dreadlocks of Rastafarians; a symbol of belonging and spiritual connection.
That Doig has established himself as one of our most accomplished painters is not really in doubt, so why does he need to combine what he is best at – painting – with music? Music has, obviously, had a profound effect on his work, but whether turning the whole gallery into an installation is anything more than a bit of self-indulgence, despite his claim that ‘it’s almost like breaking one of the great cultural taboos’ (which one is that?), is uncertain. It’s rather as if Picasso had insisted on playing The Rite of Spring whilst showing Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, in order to demonstrate that both have a connection to Primitivism. It’s not really necessary; the paintings talk for themselves.
Peter Doig: House of Music, Serpentine South Gallery, 10 October 2-25 – 8 February 2026
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Sue Hubbard is an award-winning poet, novelist and freelance art critic. Her latest novel, Flatlands from Pushkin Press can be ordered here:
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