Michael-Craig Martin THE BUCKET

The original of this painting is a 6 x5 foot work using acrylic on aluminium. The background is bright, fuchsia pink with some black outlines of several shapes. The bucket stands out as he has used red, turquoise and yellow which clashes next to the plain solid pink. At first the shapes are not very lucid but become clearer to me the more that I look at them.  There is a light bulb in the bottom right hand corner, the top of a teapot in the bottom left hand corner.  Above it is the back of a sandal.  I am not sure what is above that – it could be the front of a shoe.  The top right hand corner is the shape of a lace-up shoe. In the painting, each of the objects around  the bucket is touching it.  The picture studies colour and design. The artist leaves the observer to make a guess of why he put these particular objects together.

Craig Martin uses a computer to scan separate images to plan and experiment with them. When he is happy with his layout he then paints the piece.  He does the outlines of the design with black tape.  He uses 4 inch rollers to make a 5-6 coating of intense, strong colours.

Michael-Craig Martin was born in the year 1941 in Dublin but lived in London. He comes from a  Catholic family. He studied art in Paris, then at Yale.  He was influenced by one of his teachers, Joseph Albers who taught him theories on colour. He is famous for his piece of work called ‘the oak tree’ in 1973 which is a glass of water on a plain shelf with a text saying that it that it was an oak tree. This is called conceptualism. “People call me a conceptual artist as if the idea was all, but actually what interested me is what happened when the idea becomes a thing”.  In later works he uses everyday household objects. He uses black line drawings, brightly coloured images and the work is done on canvas usually done with acrylics and uses black tape to make out the lines. In trying to create drawings of objects with no style, he has become famous for this style.

 I have copied this picture in my book and I found that insuring the objects touched the bucket was harder than I thought it would be. I also realised that there is a lot of thought has gone into the design for example I noticed that the top of the light bulb and the rim of the bucket and the top of the sandal all were the same level. The way that Craig Martin prepares his work his similar to how I am planning my collage in class.