Michael Craig-Martin Quotes

I wanted to make new works of very contemporary objects, which I thought was interesting because many of them are manufactured in China, but these objects are universal, they go across all languages, all cultures.

The identifying personal association with objects, which are not personal, is an important modern experience - our real association, the strands of our feelings about the objects that surround us. It's also because they are so familiar, we don't think of them as important in the world, but actually they are the world. We are living in a very material world.

If you close the door to the things you feel comfortable with, you will never discover the truth about yourself.

Sometimes we look at a work of art and we immediately think that it is German art, but with some we don't, it's not so obvious.

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is very difficult to hang because it is so large and the quality is very varied. There are 1,200 works, an almost impossible number, some are interesting and some are not.

When I was a very young student I loved and admired the work of Sam Beckett, who is famously pessimistic, and whose writing is an extraordinary examination of emptiness. I wanted to be like Beckett. I don't have the same attitude toward the world, I'm naturally optimistic, and so of course I could never be like Beckett. You can't force yourself to become like someone you admire.

The person you admire was true to himself. You can only truly honour him by being true to yourself.

In my early work I didn't use much colour. I had no confidence about how I could do this.

You can't force yourself to be something you are not.

I think the best approach is not to be too much like the thing that they are referring to, see it as a guide.

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.

If things are too similar, the dialogue is not very interesting. If you put in contrast, big and small, abstract and representational, you set up the possibility of a discourse.

Today, in British education, we don't have that kind of freedom. Now there are many regulations, many rules, and bureaucracies in the education system. So, it doesn't have the flexibility that it had in the '60s, '70s, '80s.

Usually people start with painting and then go on to make installations; my painting came from installation.

It's just that some things more important for this and less important for that, and this is true regardless the style of the art.

When I told people that I was going to paint the big room magenta, many people thought that I was crazy.

When I was teaching I often said to students that you are trying to be too creative, don't be too creative, because there is so much already in what you are making, you don't need to do very much. You just need to do a little bit, and that is a lot.

You can take things from the past, from the culture, from the immediate past and things that have not yet entered the culture, so they have no history yet. You can create your own context.

In a sense [Joseph] Albers was an authoritarian teacher. He had rules about most things and very definite ideas.

I've taken away everything I could think of, and yet what remains is enough. These days many more people come to my work, and once they see my work they will always recognize it.

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.

In the period of '60s to the '90s, British art schools were small, and the number of student was small. The personal contact was great.

In the studio, it took me a long time to work out how to make paintings that had the intensity that I was able to create by painting whole rooms. There is a very limited number of colours but there are many variations. I decided to use the purest palette that I could.

As an artist you are free to use any image, any style, any idea from any culture and any period of history.

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.

My idea for every exhibition is we should be able to see every individual work without being distracted by the others, and it doesn't matter if it's quite crowded.

The art world, of all worlds, has room for everyone.