“Trust yourself. Trust your instincts.”
We celebrate the 100th episode of our Advice to the Young series with legendary artist and teacher Michael Craig-Martin, who shares his thoughts on what to treasure in life.
“Pay attention to what you are happy doing. To what you are good at. People take their gifts for granted. If something comes naturally to you, you kind of assume that it is natural to everybody. And you are wrong. The things that are natural to you aren’t natural to anybody else. They are yours.”
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 February 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
SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER:
https://channel.louisiana.dk/newsletter
FOLLOW US HERE:
Website: http://channel.louisiana.dk
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/louisianachannel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaChannel
source
UCY2mhw-XNZSxrUynsI5K8Zw
