Michael Craig-Martin: The Complete Prints and Multiples
The vibrant, highly graphic cover and satisfying dense shape and weight of Michael Craig-Martin: The Complete Prints and Multiples certainly signal that this is the definitive coffee table book on the artist, if not merely the catalogue raisonné of his printed output. Produced on the heels of a retrospective at the Royal Academy in London, Craig-Martin is clearly having a moment in the zeitgeist.
Catalogue raisonnés often suffer from their exhaustive nature: without editing a greatest hits of an artist’s creativity, one can get bogged down in visual repetition. An artist can lose that mythic “genius” when one sees all their misses and not-quite-the-bests. On the other hand, the format also offers a window into a process, the ability to see the evolution of a creative mind at work, toying with motifs and discovering through-lines.
Unfortunately, Craig-Martin isn’t often nuanced enough to warrant that kind of deep exploration—and that’s no insult to the artist. His work is pure Pop pleasure, filled with humor and cultural signifiers. One just doesn’t need to produce a PhD on the visual equivalent of a Miami postcard or a Lisa Frank sticker. Sometimes it’s just enjoyable enough to let the bright colors wash over one’s eyes, the image of a pink glove branded with the word “love” forcing a tiny smirk (Get it? Love glove? A condom?).
There are also plenty of art history references for those who like to feel like they’re part of the in crowd. A Donald Judd stack here, a Duchamp bottle dryer there; he even neon-ifies Velazquez’s Las Meninas. There are undoubtedly many parallels to Andy Warhol, who did it better—but where Warhol is gritty, transactional, Craig-Martin is light, commercial. The author calls this retinal (rather the cerebral) art—others might just say it’s fun.
As there are not many other volumes of this scale or quality on the artist, it is a welcome addition to any library wanting to round out its Pop art offerings or highlight one of the last artists of that generation. Beyond that very specific audience, however, this is not a necessary tome to invest in this holiday season.