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Friday 9 January 2009

Is he worth it?

Andrew Lambirth on the new exhibition of Peter Doig's work

For an artist who really used paint creatively, and who was a marvellous colourist into the bargain, visit the Ken Kiff show at Marlborough Fine Art, 6 Albemarle Street, W1 (until 1 March). A whole group of previously unseen paintings and works on paper comes as a timely reminder (some seven years after his death) that in him we have a major artist, insufficiently appreciated.

I am a longstanding Kiff supporter — I knew him well, wrote the main monograph on his work and contributed an essay to the catalogue of the current exhibition — but I urge you to make up your own mind about his art. Go and see it: there is a gentleness and serenity to his imagery even though it probes the darker recesses of the unconscious. The draughtsmanship is exact and unfaltering, the colour compelling and joyous, the stuff of paint worked in ways which add meaning and fluency to the archetypal subject matter. Kiff dared to embrace fairytale as well as myth, the mundane and the heroic, and distilled from their convergence an original vision of startling relevance. Just the sort of artist who deserves a Tate retrospective. Can we expect one? We can hope.

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