Michael Craig-Martin Quotes & Sayings

I was poorer than anyone I'd ever met. But it was a great time to be a young artist - I remember it as a period of exceptional creative freedom and adventure, when one was regularly presented with works of art unlike anything one had ever seen before. — Michael Craig-Martin

I have been using the computer as a work aid since the mid-90's. It is extraordinarily well suited to how I think and work and has transformed my practice. Nearly everything I have done in the past 15 years would have been impossible without it. I use the computer for drawing, composing and colour planning everything, from postage stamps to paintings to architectural-scale installations. — Michael Craig-Martin

The complexity of the language of images is disguised by the ease and rapidity with which we read them. I've tried to make work that is as transparent and simple as possible. No matter how much I strip away the result is always more complex to me than I expect. — Michael Craig-Martin

I do think I paid a price as an artist, and I am trying to make up for it now - I work six days a week in the studio, and I've never been happier. — Michael Craig-Martin

I came to painting through sculpture, to images through objects. I think that images sit in the middle, somewhere between objects and words. — Michael Craig-Martin

'Understanding' art is like having a sense of humour - if you don't have one, no amount of explanation is going to make you laugh. — Michael Craig-Martin

The internet has extended the possibility of making art to more people, and particularly of enabling it to be seen by others. I am sure the internet is having a profound impact on art, particularly those who have grown up with it, but making good art will remain as difficult (and as easy) as it ever was. Having a lasting impact may become more not less difficult. — Michael Craig-Martin

I am personally happy for artists to make as much money as they can while they can to carry them through the times when they can't. — Michael Craig-Martin

I try to make images that have the immediate presence we take for granted in objects - a chair, a shoe, a book, a Judd - and compose them like sentences. — Michael Craig-Martin

There is a complete difference between art and the art market. Prices are high now for the simple reason that there are people are willing to pay them. The market dominates the art world today because at the moment collectors call the shots. Like everything else that won't last forever. — Michael Craig-Martin

I have never understood, for instance, why some people see contemporary art as divided between 'painting' and 'conceptual art', as though this represented a genuine division. — Michael Craig-Martin

In the late 70's I started to make drawings of the ordinary objects I had been using in my work. Initially I wanted them to be ready-made drawings of the kind of common objects I had always used in my work. I was surprised to discover I couldn't find the simple, neutral drawings I had assumed existed, so I started to make them myself. — Michael Craig-Martin

Whatever happens to the art world, art will go on regardless. As for obscurity, it looms just over the horizon beckoning us all. Why worry. — Michael Craig-Martin

I thought the objects we value least because they were ubiquitous were actually the most extraordinary. — Michael Craig-Martin

The art world, of all worlds, has room for everyone. — Michael Craig-Martin