Michael Craig Martin
Michael Craig Martin is a contemporary conceptual artist; he
draws and paints ordinary objects. He was born in Dublin-Ireland in 1941 and
later went to live in the United States. He also studied Fine Arts at Yale
University.
He has done exhibitions all around the world. These include Austria,
Germany and many others. In 1974 he exhibited his most famous work ‘the oak
tree’ which is a cup of glass filled with water on top of a shelf. His ‘oak
tree’ work has gotten a lot criticism from a lot of people. Also in the 70’s he
was amazed to discover that nobody was doing drawings of ready-made objects. He
thought the ready-made drawings of ordinary things already existed but that was
not the case so he felt he had to be the one to draw them and put them as much
in character as the objects themselves. He started to create line drawings of
ordinary objects using bend tape to construct his work and make it stand out.
Michael Craig Martin is fascinated with the reality of art. He says this
in an interview with BBC “art has nothing to do with the nature of the object,
nor with how it was made. It is to do with how you think about the thing you’re
looking at. If you look at something and put it into the context of art that is
essential for it to be art”. He likes to create tension using colour, different
objects and exploring the relationship between them.
His most famous ordinary object piece of art is the ‘Eye of
the Storm’ which is an open safety pin that floats above a bucket and a
long-handled garden fork which is propped against a light bulb. The outlined
pictures of objects later acquired brilliant/vibrant colours. He states this in
an interview about his ‘Eye of the Storm’ piece: “over and over again as a way
of trying to construct situations, to construct images and pictures, places ...
to use very simple things to describe very complex ideas ... Because they’re so
familiar, they’re like a universal language, anybody can see them”.
Michael Craig Martin wants people to feel
like they are stepping inside his art and experiencing it fully instead of just
looking at it as a painting.
In my opinion Michael Craig Martin is an intelligent person who knows how to explain his art and draw people into it. He knows exactly what his talking about. I don’t like the way he necessarily thinks about art and artists. He believes that anything in a gallery is considered art and I disagree with that point because I wouldn’t consider for example a glass full of water on top of a shelf art but that’s just my opinion. I also don’t agree that everybody who says they do art is necessarily an artist either. I think Michael Craig Martin’s work is cleverly done and constructed. The way he uses colour combination and detailed lines with not much detail in the object itself is really amazing. He makes his work really colourful and vibrant to make it stand out and bring emotions to the viewers. I’m biased about his work because I think it’s quite ordinary to draw everyday objects but then again nobody except him taught of doing it before. Also because he does it in a different way for example the proportions of his objects are not to scale and the objects feel like it’s almost flowing with no gravity on the paper is really amazing to think about.
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