An Oak Tee, Daniel Craig-Martin

Michael Craig-Martin at the Royal Academy of Arts.  An Oak Tree.

This post is just on An Oak Tree, an installation by Michael Craig-Martin. I saw this artwork at Tate Modern (I think ?) many many years ago, I was intrigued by it so I remembered it very well. But, I did not remember who the artist was. In fact I did not know Craig-Martin's work - it was later that I fell in love with his coloured paintings - so I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was the first artwork in the exhibition of Craig-Martin's work at the RA. There will be posts on the rest of the exhibition but this is just about  An Oak Tree.

Following his graduation from Yale School of Art in 1966, Craig-Martin began to produce sculptural works based on the minimalist and conceptual movements of the time.  He began working with ready-made objects such as buckets, milk bottles and clipboards to produce a group of wall-based sculptures that explored the relationship between art and everyday items.

In one radical work, An Oak Tree (1973), a glass of water is accompanied by a text declaring that the artist has transformed the object into a tree. With this uncompromising statement, Craig-Martin challenges the perceived roles of artist and audience in making a work of art.

An Oak Tree, 1973, (glass, water, metal and printed text on paper)

The text accompanying the artwork:

Following An Oak Tree, Craig-Martin felt that he had reached a conclusion to the conceptual path he had been following and returned to basics through drawing and image-making.