"I'll pay for that"
May 5 2011
The Guardian has a good interview with the artist Michael Craig-Martin, the 'godfather of the YBAs'. As a tutor at Goldsmith's College, he had a significant influence on Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst. The Guardian asks him:
Didn't you feel jealous of their success? "Of course! I remember Damien showing Charles Saatchi his idea for a shark in his notebook, and Saatchi saying, 'I'll pay for that.'
Craig-Martin also (gasp) says that artists should actually make their art:
"People call me a conceptual artist, as if the idea was all, but actually what interests me is what happens when the idea becomes a thing. Ideas are by their nature generalisations, something that can be applied to lots of things. But making art is about making particulars, and that particular something can be the generator of a generalisation."
A new exhibition of Craig-Martin's drawings is at the Alan Cristea Gallery in London.
