Seminar Presentation

Born in Ireland, raised and educated in the US, he studied painting at Yale University in the early 1960s

A course that had previously been taught by Josef Albers - who had studied and taught at the Bauhaus.

Although, MCM was never taught by Albers himself - the courses at Yale still reflected the years that Albers taught it - It centred around colour, space and form.

 FILM 1963:

This is a film MCM done as his final piece for his BA in painting – titled film.

Warhol’s move to independent film making inspired Craig-Martin to make this film, which was recorded in Ireland and mainly depicted empty, still landscapes with hardly any figures.      

The film was thought to be lost until 2000, when it was discovered among some stored family possessions.

QUOTE:

“Warhol is possibly the most important figure in the fundamental change that occurred in art in the early 60’s, and that this marked the beginning of truly post-war, truly American art.

The Abstract Expressionists look increasingly European, a kind of culmination of the great European tradition. An artist like Andy Warhol seems to me to have very little to do with that.

Warhol changes the whole notion about what a work of art is and how one deals with it”

By 1964, during MCM’s MA in painting - Jack Tworkov, an abstract expressionist painter, was the head of Yale’s Art Department.

And brought in more current, cutting-edge visiting tutors, such as Jim Dine and Frank Stella:

Dine’s use of dull objects didn’t evade his eyes.  

Stella showed hundreds of slides of work by his artist- friends in NY - but didn’t say a word, believing the work could “speak for itself”

In 1966 he moved to England on an invitation to teach at Bath Academy of Art and brought with him the Modernism of his own teachers and aimed to 'open eyes'.

ON THE SHELF:

He obviously believes in Andy Warhol’s work but I don’t think he agreed with his methods:

When Andy Warhol paints a brillo box, he just paints a brillo box.

BUT there are real objects in the world and why would you bother making an object when the world is already full of them

A thing is what it is; it’s not pretending to be something else

So, he tries to think of real objects as though they are art

MCM likes the characteristic of the object - all objects are the shape/size/style they are because of their functionality, they’re designed like that for a reason, for their purpose

So if MCM had done what Duchamp did with the urinal, he would want to actually pee in it.

DAMIEN HIRST: “That piece is, I think, the greatest piece of conceptual sculpture; I still can't get it out of my head.”

PLAY VIDEO - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4PQA0QH9xs

TAPE WORK

Can’t paint/draw cassette tapes anymore because young people don’t know what it was and the images have to be relatable and he can't do a CD that would be dull.

PLAY VIDEO -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaAf61yF8gE

I'm exploring colour and composition, why paint colours like they really are, that’s boring and it's been done already – you can see what colours they already are, create something new, exciting and vibrant.

YBA’S

From 1973 to 1988 Craig-Martin taught at Goldsmiths' College.

As a teacher he nurtured the talents of the generation of artists now at the forefront of British art, including Damien Hirst, Ian Davenport, Fiona Rae, Julian Opie, and Sarah Lucas.

He left teaching to continue his career as an artist – which was always the plan.

Having much more time on his hands, he has been able to do a lot more work and bigger works.

In the early 90s when he started to paint walls it became obvious to him that it was like turning the room itself into a painting - creating a pictorial space out of the 3D space.

Even though, one of the aims of his paintings are to make them seems mass-produced and lack the hand-made quality, MCM’s painting are extremely hand-crafted.

QUOTE

“For many painters, like Picasso for example, there's a live connection between the gesture, the mark and the image, and these things are all part of a very active hand-eye process. Then there are artists like me, who use assemblage or collage - I'm essentially a constructor, a putter-togetherer of things. I see my paintings as being informed by my years of making sculpture. I think of my paintings as flat sculptures.”

The greatest impact on Craig-Martin’s work has been the computer, he got his first Mac in the early 90s for word processing and he discovered that the way he assembled text was the same way he assembled his work.

The cut and paste tool was a dream for him. He found that he could scan all the separate images that he wanted to assemble on to the computer, the planning for all his work is digital now.

He plans out his compositions and decides what colour each shape or line will be. 

When it comes to making the actual piece he might have to change it slightly to adapt to the circumstances.

He has done some digital works but the quality that he gets from painting, the layering has a physical characteristic he prefers.

All of the painting is done with four-inch rollers – he’s nearly eliminated the brush altogether.

Rolling gives a very even colour, and it can cope with many layers, and it needs too.

Often the entire canvas has to be painted a certain colour to produce one section.

You need five or six coats for each colour, so sometimes there are 40 coats on the entire surface.

He start out by gessoing the surface white.

He uses colours in their purest form, with each colour brought to its highest level of intensity; layering brings a richness to the final colours. In one painting he’s done there are 20 or 30 colours.

He’s interested in exploiting the simplest of things to create things that are not so simple.

To me Craig-Martin has done what every other artist does, but in a much more obvious way – he’s taken what’s around him and used it in his work.

All the objects he paints are his – it’s his watch or his shoe and his wine glass.

The style MCM is known for was actually formed though him trying to escape having one.

In the 2000s he did a lot of commissions and public art – like Warhol he believes art is for everybody.

Church piece: "I've always thought of my work as either trying to reveal something that is already there or bring back to life something that has died. to re-invisionate, to use the colours and images to bring life to something"

 QUOTE

'I always say yes to any strange thing I'm asked to do, personally as well as professionally. Whenever I think of the next thing, I always imagine the opposite of what I've just done. If it had a lot of colour, I think of black and white. If big, then small. I'm in the studio seven days a week. I don't take holidays. When I'm in a wheelchair, that'll be my holiday. But you know, I'm never bored.'

During this year he started adding letters and words into works, but in his mind A isn't for apple, it's for umbrella. Craig-Martin explained in an interview that this was to do with a visual co-ordinance.

He references other artists work in his own: Warhol’s soup can, Duchamp's urinal, Magritte's pipe, Man Ray's iron.

His most recent work, this is part of a series. All the pieces in this series have a plain background, but range from sofa's to laptops and iPhone's.

Feedback sheets:

Evaluation of presentation:

I felt that my presentation went well and I am pleased with the feedback from both Jamie and my fellow students. Jamie said that I put Michael Craig-Martin into context well, with the art movements and the artists he inspired and was inspired by. In some of the other feedback forms it was mentioned that Craig-Martin’s work related well to my own drawing project and that I should look at Patrick Caulfield’s work. They also mentioned in one of them that I needed a more personal opinion on Craig-Martin’s work, which now I think on it, I did. I got too caught up in other people opinions (critics/other artist’s etc…) I forgot to add my own in. I did quickly say about how he works and the process he uses, but I should have said a lot more.

If I did my presentation again I would have focused more on one particular piece or series of similar works. I could have also tried to email him to ask questions and maybe get more in-depth answers, but felt that I had more than enough research to go through, there was nothing I needed to know.

I briefly mentioned about how he use to draw cassette tape but he feels he’s unable to do that now because no one knows what they are anymore. I should have expanded more on how his work has developed, the subjects are different but the techniques and results have barely moved on from where they when 40 years ago. He now draws memory sticks, laptops, iPhones and credit cards. He draws these in the same style he drew the cassettes and light bulbs, but he is aware of his audience and understands that he has to change the subject to freshen up, not only the viewers but his work as well.

I have recently found out that there’s an exhibition in the UK for Michael Craig-Martin’s work (pictured below). Big coloured sculptures in the grounds of a house, open to the public. I would have liked to include this in my presentation, show what the most recent work was; the most current work I found was from 2013.