Inarguably, octogenarian artist Michael Craig-Martin matters. He taught the YBAs, pushed conceptualism in bold new directions and created one of the most unique, immediately recognisable visual languages of the contemporary era. But he has only really had two ideas.
Among the early, student-y conceptual pieces here in this major retrospective is ‘An Oak Tree’. It looks an awful lot like a glass of water on a glass shelf, but the accompanying text insists that this is a full grown oak tree. It’s conceptual brinkmanship, pushing the idea of an idea as far as possible, an exercise in semantics. But people who insist on arguing about semantics just aren’t fun to be around.
Then there’s idea number two: the pictorial, graphic depiction of everyday objects. He’s now taking forks and lightbulbs and pens and rendering them in a (his words) ‘styleless’, neutral, Technicolor aesthetic. He wants to explore who we are through the objects we make, use and consume, to find meaning in the everyday. At first you think ok, a pen, a paperclip, blue, yellow, that’s us, we are consumerism, we are objects, got it. But he really wants to make sure you really do got it, so he hammers that one idea into submission, churns it out, repeats it over and over forever and ever. It’s relentless, like water torture for the eyes.
It’s not that the idea is bad, it’s that it wasn’t so good that it was worth doing a million times.
By the time it ends with the worst ever portrait of George Michael and the most low-rent immersive experience ever, you’re about ready to stick one of his line-drawing fork sculptures into your own eye.
Like with all fears, confronting them diminishes them. I no longer fear a huge Michael Craig-Martin exhibition. But I am glad it’s over.