“It’s one of the most extraordinary things we learn.”
We visited legendary artist Michael Craig-Martin in his London studio and found a man who, in his mid-80s, still has a boyish fascination for images.
“Without them, there wouldn’t be language. A picture of a shoe has nothing to do with a shoe. It’s an entirely different kind of thing. To me, that ability to understand images is the basis of all human understanding.”
Michael Craig-Martin was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1941. He grew up and was educated in the United States, studying Fine Art at the Yale School of Art and Architecture. He has lived and worked in Britain since 1966.
His first solo exhibition was at the Rowan Gallery in London in 1969. He participated in the definitive exhibition of British conceptual art, The New Art at the Hayward Gallery in 1972. His best known works include An oak tree of 1973, in which he claimed to have changed a glass of water into an oak tree; his large-scale black and white wall drawings; and his intensely coloured paintings, installations, and commissions, including the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg, the Laban Dance Centre in London (in collaboration with Herzog and de Meuron), the DLR station at Woolwich Arsenal, and, most recently, the HDI Gerling Headquarters in Hannover.
Over the past forty-two years, he has had numerous exhibitions and installations in galleries and museums across the world, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and MoMA, New York; the Kunstvereins in Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, and Hannover; IVAM in Valencia; and Kunsthaus Bregenz. He represented Britain at the 23rd São Paulo Biennial. A retrospective of his work was presented at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, in 1989; a second at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2006; and a third at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 2015.
Craig-Martin is well known for being an influential teacher at Goldsmiths College, London. He was a Tate Trustee from 1989 to 1999, was awarded a CBE in 2000, and was elected an RA in 2006. In 2016, he was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to art.
Michael Craig-Martin was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in his London studio in September 2026.
Camera: Simon Weyhe
Edit: Nanna Dahm
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond.
Subscribe to our channel for more videos on art: https://www.youtube.com/thelouisianachannel
FOLLOW US HERE:
Website: http://channel.louisiana.dk
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/louisianachannel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaChannel
source
UCY2mhw-XNZSxrUynsI5K8Zw
