Etching on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
Grasshopper
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/peter-doig-2361" aria-label="More by Peter Doig" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Peter Doig</a>
Canoe Lake
Presented by the artist and Charles Booth-Clibborn 1998
adults
boat, canoe
landscape
man
night
people
river
society
times of the day
transport: water
water: inland
wooded
<p><i>Grasshopper </i>is Doig’s third print portfolio, following <i>Ten Etchings </i>1996 (Tate P11471-P11480) and <i>Blizzard ’77</i> 1997 (Tate P11554-P11561). It was produced in an edition of thirty-five. Tate’s copy is one of seven additional proof sets. Each print is individually signed and numbered ‘TC’ (Tate copy) by the artist. The portfolio is presented in a pale yellow, hinged solander box bearing the artist’s name in dark brown. The title and colophon pages were designed by Peter B. Willberg and printed in dark green. The contents were printed at Hope Sufferance Press, London on 350gsm Zerkall paper and published by Charles Booth-Clibborn under his imprint, The Paragon Press. Colour etching involves a layering process sympathetic to Doig’s painting process of building up colours and image in many stages. The prints in <i>Grasshopper</i> were created using between one and three plates and a range of etching techniques. Variety in texture and tone was created with aquatint (a process for creating an even tonal field), open bite (a method in which unprotected areas of the plate are exposed to acid to produce a very light tone), deep bite (a process which results in very dark tones), spit bite (a method involving painting or splashing acid onto the plate resulting in painterly effects) and sugarlift (a process which allows the artist to paint marks that print rather than having to outline them negatively). The individual prints were originally untitled, but were titled by the artist on publication of <i>Contemporary British Art in Print: The Publications of Charles Booth-Clibborn and his Imprint The Paragon Press 1995-2000</i> in 2001.</p>
paper print etching
9 November 2012 – 20 January 2013
2013-01-20
9 November 2012 – 20 January 2013
2013-01-20
2012-11-09
Metropolitan Arts Centre (Belfast, UK)
2012-11-09
Peter Doig
Loan-out
Canoe Lake
image: 277 × 401 mm
Presented by the artist and Charles Booth-Clibborn 1998
<p><i>Grasshopper </i>is Doig’s third print portfolio, following <i>Ten Etchings </i>1996 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-ski-jacket-p11471" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11471</span></a>-<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-white-out-p11480" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11480</span></a>) and <i>Blizzard ’77</i> 1997 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-no-title-p11554" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11554</span></a>-<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-no-title-p11561" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11561</span></a>). It was produced in an edition of thirty-five. Tate’s copy is one of seven additional proof sets. Each print is individually signed and numbered ‘TC’ (Tate copy) by the artist. The portfolio is presented in a pale yellow, hinged solander box bearing the artist’s name in dark brown. The title and colophon pages were designed by Peter B. Willberg and printed in dark green. The contents were printed at Hope Sufferance Press, London on 350gsm Zerkall paper and published by Charles Booth-Clibborn under his imprint, The Paragon Press. Colour etching involves a layering process sympathetic to Doig’s painting process of building up colours and image in many stages. The prints in <i>Grasshopper</i> were created using between one and three plates and a range of etching techniques. Variety in texture and tone was created with aquatint (a process for creating an even tonal field), open bite (a method in which unprotected areas of the plate are exposed to acid to produce a very light tone), deep bite (a process which results in very dark tones), spit bite (a method involving painting or splashing acid onto the plate resulting in painterly effects) and sugarlift (a process which allows the artist to paint marks that print rather than having to outline them negatively). The individual prints were originally untitled, but were titled by the artist on publication of <i>Contemporary British Art in Print: The Publications of Charles Booth-Clibborn and his Imprint The Paragon Press 1995-2000</i> in 2001.
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<br/>The title <i>Grasshopper</i> is associated, for Doig, with lines found in a book on the history of ice hockey (a sport the artist enjoys from his adolescence spent in rural Canada). A farmer settling in the northern American prairies in the nineteenth century is quoted as having remarked: ‘Man is a grasshopper here, a mere insect making way between the enormous discs of heaven and earth’ (<i>Contemporary British Art in Print</i>, p.313). The portfolio shares its title with a painting created in 1990 (Saatchi Collection, London) depicting a vast landscape seen from the perspective of an insect. For early settlers on the northern American continent, the conquest of nature (or at least its partial taming) was of prime importance and the landscape has a power and significance largely lost in densely populated and more ancient Europe. It represents potential for both sublime beauty and the horror of death, decay and obliteration. The tension between these two has been a recurring theme in Doig’s paintings since the early 1990s. The prints in <i>Grasshopper</i>
are dominated by black and as a result are far darker than Doig’s previous imagery. This heightens the sense of danger suggested in the human relationship with the landscape. 
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<br/><i>Canoe Lake</i> portrays an image used repeatedly by the artist. It is a figure in a canoe on a lake, drifting idly, one arm hanging over the side of the canoe, the hand trailing the water. This image is derived from a still photograph Doig took from a video of the cult horror film <i>Friday the 13<sup>th</sup></i> (1980, director Sean S. Cunningham). His painting <i>Echo Lake </i>1998 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-echo-lake-t07467" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T07467</span></a>) is also based on a still from this film. Several versions of the image represented in the etching exist in various media and are likewise titled <i>Canoe Lake</i>. The print version is a close-up view, the canoe filling the frame horizontally. The canoe, figure and lakeside in the background were printed in black over a wash of orange which fills the sky and lake, conveying a sinister atmosphere. Several other images in the portfolio portray figures in boats on a lake. <i>Night Fishing </i>(<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-night-fishing-p11552" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11552</span></a>) is an even darker image of a lake and canoe, in which the shadowy forms of two people are barely visible. A lighter, but perhaps no less sinister, atmosphere is depicted in <i>Lunker</i> (<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/doig-lunker-p11550" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P11550</span></a>), in which a dark silhouetted figure stands in a small boat, fishing in a lake. 
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<br/><i>Canoe Lake</i> is landscape in format. It was made using one etching plate and the techniques of softground, hardground and aquatint.
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<br/><b>Further reading:</b>
<br/>Patrick Elliott, Jeremy Lewison, <i>Contemporary Art in Print: The Publications of Charles Booth-Clibborn and his Imprint The Paragon Press 1995-2000</i>, London 2001, pp.100-111 and 313, reproduced p.105 in colour.
<br/><i>Peter Doig: Blizzard seventy-seven</i>, exhibition catalogue, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kunsthalle 
<br/>Nurnberg, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 1998, pp.110-111.
<br/><i>Peter Doig: Version</i>, exhibition catalogue, Kunsthaus, Glarus 1999, pp.6-7, reproduced p.6.
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<br/>Elizabeth Manchester
<br/>November 2002/January 2008
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<br/></p>

Summary
2008-02-19T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
adults boat, canoe landscape man night people river society times of the day transport: water water: inland wooded