2009.3.4
Michael Craig-Martin, one of the key figures in the first generation of British-based conceptual artists, is hosting a solo exhibition at PKM Trinity Gallery in Cheongdam-dong, southern Seoul.
Craig-Martin was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1941, brought up in the United States and educated at Yale. He returned to Europe in the mid-'60s to be a professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London.
There he taught Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and many other artists who would become known as the members of the "Young British Artists" group in the early '90s.
Craig-Martin has since been best known as the teacher of Hirst, one of the best-selling contemporary artists in the world. In describing his famous student, he can't help but use the word "very" over and over.
"Damien is very unusual, very powerful, very clever, very ambitious, very thoughtful, and very courageous," he said at a press conference in Seoul last week.
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"From the 1980s till now is one period in auction. For me, this period opened with Damien Hurst's exhibition 'Freeze,' and ended with Damien Hurst's auction. It is amazing to find one person to define one period."
Although he might have been pushed out of the spotlight by his talented student, Craig-Martin is an acclaimed artist in his own right. His specialty is to give unusual perspectives to everyday objects.
"Andy (Warhol) always used images of people who are famous, like Marilyn Monroe. So I thought: 'Who is more familiar than Marilyn Monroe?' I thought of chairs, shoes and tables. These simple objects we make have become an international language of our time," the artist said.
Boldly outlined images of a chair, a light bulb, or a sandal float in fluorescent colors on Craig-Martin's canvases.
"I deliberately make the drawings very simple and very impersonal. It is because I want my drawings to have the same characters (the actual objects) have," he explained.
"All mass-produced objects have this look. You can see how elegant, poetic, complex, and how much of an architecture they are. In a way, it's perfect."
While he features mass produced objects, Craig-Martin's paintings are labor intensive. He first draws a rough sketch and makes all the changes on his computer with a mouse. Then he projects the sketch onto a canvas, puts a special tape along the outlines of the sketch, and colors the canvas elaborately with various acrylic paints. To make the color look more intense, he uses the exact colors the paint factory made, straight out of the tube.
Many people think of him as a pop artist because he uses such radiant colors. He only started to use colors in the 1990s, though.
"I never think of myself as a pop artist. For many years, all the work that I did was in black and white and nobody ever said that I was a pop artist. It was only when I introduced the color," he said.
The biggest difference between pop art and his work is that pop art uses images that already exist in photos or comic books, while he makes his images himself, he said.
He admits that he was influenced by pop art, as he was a student when it began in the early 1960s. He remembers it was the first time art reached such a wide audience.
"The idea of making art which people who are innocent and know little about art can also participate in it was great," he said.
Craig-Martin's exhibition runs through March 31. For more information, call (02) 515-9496 or visit www.pkmgallery.com
By Park Min-young
(claire@heraldm.com)
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