SOUND AND VISION

Peter Doig's House of Music exhibition at the Serpentine South Gallery combines the world's most influential painter's twin passions of art and music, writes Mark Hudson

- Mark Hudson

This is a “live” review, from an exhibition that’s as near as most of us will get to attending a party – no, a gig – in the world’s coolest painter’s studio. I’m at the Serpentine Gallery, sitting in a vintage modernist armchair surrounded by a choice array of Peter Doig paintings, as ethereal ambient sounds drift from a Klangfilm Euronor speaker. This 1950s German sonic transmitter is as far as you'll get from the near-invisible, hyper-directional speakers favoured in art galleries these days. Standing at nearly 10ft in its polished wooden casing, the spotlit speaker looms over the space like some monstrous modernist idol – a sculpture, almost, in its own right.

Doig’s multi-referential canvases have made him probably the single most influential painter in the world today. His assembling of different styles of painting and diverse forms of imagery – from old master paintings and random found photographs to horror movies – has often felt akin to a quasi-musical “mixing”. So the fact that he happens to be obsessed with music doesn’t come as a surprise.

Born in Scotland in 1959, and raised in Canada and Trinidad – the latter of which has been a big influence on his tastes – he chose to study at London’s St Martins School of Art to be close to his favourite post-punk bands. His record collection, which extends through calypso, reggae and hip-hop to rock and jazz, is dispersed through domiciles and lockups spanning three continents.