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Quote by Michael Craig-Martin

“I had been doing wall drawings, but they were always black and white. Then in 1993 I painted all the walls of a room to make an installation and as soon as I saw the colour on the walls, it changed my whole life.”

Quote by Michael Craig-Martin

Author

Michael Craig-Martin

Michael Craig-Martin is a British contemporary artist born on August 28, 1941. Known for his unique artistic style and creative techniques, his works span across various mediums including painting, sculpture, and installation art. more

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

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“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.”

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“When I look at the objects that I draw, it seems to me so obvious about the contemporary world - these are our world.”

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“I decided I should use the most obvious colours - the basic colours with simple names: red, purple, yellow, pink. I don't distort the objects, I don't change the objects, I draw them exactly as they are. I do the opposite with the colours.”

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

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“The first exhibition that I used bright colours in painting the room was at a gallery in Paris, and there were seven rooms in the gallery. It was very nice gallery, not very big rooms, around the courtyard, it was a very French space. So I painted each room in different colour. When people came to the exhibition, I saw they came with a smile. Everybody smiles - this is something I never saw in my work before.”

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“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.”

Difficult Interesting Numbers Quality Impossible Summer Royal Academy Exhibitions

Author:Michael Craig-Martin

“Usually when I go to the Summer Exhibition, I think every room is too much the same, and I loose my capacity to look at individual works.”

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“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.”

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“You can see in my paintings, I've taken away the context, I've taken away the shadows, I've taken away expression, I've taken away the personal, and yet so much remains!”

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Author:Michael Craig-Martin