| Michael Craig-Martin | |
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An Oak Tree by Michael Craig-Martin |
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| Born | 28 August 1941 Dublin, Ireland |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Field | painting, drawing, conceptual artist |
| Training | Yale University |
| Movement | Conceptualism |
| Works | An Oak Tree |
| Website | http://www.michaelcraigmartin.co.uk/ |
Michael Craig-Martin RA (born Dublin, 28 August 1941) is a contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is noted for his fostering of the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artwork, An Oak Tree. He is Emeritus Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths.[1]
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Michael Craig-Martin was born to Irish parents, Paul and Rhona, both devout Catholics, who lived in London, where his father worked as an agricultural economist for the British Ministry of Food.[2] They wanted their son to be born in Ireland, and went to Dublin for the birth to take place, then returned to London.[2] In 1945, the family moved to Washington D.C.[2] In the U.S. he was given a religious education, initially for eight years in a Roman Catholic school run by nuns, and then in the English Benedictine Priory School, where pupils were encouraged to look at religious imagery in illuminated glass panels and stained-glass windows.[2] He gained an interest in art through one of the priests, who was an artist, and was also strongly impressed by a display in the Phillips Collection of work by Mark Rothko.[2]
Craig-Martin studied in the Lycée Français in Bogotá, Colombia, where his father had employment for a while. Drawing classes in the Lycée by an artist, Antonio Roda, gave him a wider perspective on art, and in later years he observed that his experience of art in school in Washington had been a very rigid and limited one.[2] His parents had no inclination to art, though they did have on display in their home Picasso's Greedy Child.[3][4] Back in Washington, he attended drawing classes given there by artists, then in 1959 attended Fordham University in New York for English Literature and History, while also starting to paint.[3]
In the summer of 1961, he studied art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and in the fall began a painting course at Yale College, where the teaching was strongly influenced by the multi-disciplinary experimentation and minimalist theories on colour and form of Josef Albers, a former head of department.[3] Craig-Martin later said, "Everything I know about colour comes from that course."[3] Tutors on the course included artists, Alex Katz and Al Held.[3]
In 1974,[5] he exhibited the seminal piece An Oak Tree. The work consists of a glass of water standing on a shelf attached to the gallery wall next to which is a text using a semiotic argument to explain why it is in fact an oak tree. Nevertheless, on one occasion when it was barred by Australian Customs officials from entering the country as vegetation, he was forced to explain it was really a glass of water.[6] The work was bought by the National Gallery of Australia in 1977; however, the Tate gallery has an artist's copy.[6]
In the 1980s, Craig-Martin was a tutor at Goldsmiths College, Department of Art, he was a significant influence on the emerging YBA generation, including Damien Hirst. He was also helpful in promoting the Freeze show to established art-world figures. He was a subject for an article in the Observer regarding the mentors of British art, it was entitled Schools of Thought and described his influence in greater detail.[7]
Craig-Martin's style of detached conceptualism, minimal construction by the artist and the use of readymade techniques inspired by Marcel Duchamp had a marked impression on his students, as did an educational structure based on multi-media, removing traditional departmental demarcations such as "painting", "sculpture" and "time-based [film] media".
Craig-Martin's later works have used a stylised drawing technique often depicting everyday household objects and sometimes incorporating art references, such as objects known from their use in Dada artworks. His work can be compared to that of his earlier contemporary Patrick Caulfield and latterly with that of Julian Opie. There is no differentiation in treatment, which consists of black line drawings with lines of equal mechanical width and brightly coloured images, which have been compared to "nursery" colours. The work is done on canvas with (acrylic) paint or with other methods, such as using black tape to make the lines. In the Intelligence show at Tate Britain he completed an entire room in this fashion.
Craig-Martin has been a trustee of the Tate Gallery and is a trustee of the National Art Collections Fund.
A retrospective of his work took place at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1989. In 2006, the Irish Museum of Modern Art presented “Michael Craig-Martin: Works 1964-2006” which included works from over 40 years of Craig-Martin’s career. The exhibition showed around 50 paintings, sculptures, wall drawings, neon works and text pieces by the artist, covering everything from his sculptures to digital works. One of his works called On the Table (1970) involved four metal buckets suspended on a table, exemplifying the influence of Minimalism and Conceptualism had on Craig-Martin. An Oak Tree (1973), consisting of an ordinary glass of water on an equally plain shelf, with a text by Craig-Martin that asserts the superiority of the artist’s intention over the object itself is now recognized as a turning point in the development of conceptual art; very different remarks from its original views which were surprise and sometimes scorn.[8]
He is represented internationally by Gagosian Gallery and Alan Cristea Gallery in London.
Whilst at Yale University, Craig-Martin met his colleague and future wife Jan Hashey with whom he had a daughter, Jessica Craig-Martin. He is divorced from Hashey.[9]
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