Let\u2019s suppose that you are a Turner prize-winning sculptor, with more than 50 years in the game. One restless night, an idea comes to you. You work it up in your studio and send it off to the foundry, to be cast in bronze. Finally, you\u2019re ready to show it to the world, but the first person through the gallery doors barely glances at it before taking a selfie with it. What do you do? Bear in mind that you are Tony Cragg, Royal Academician, and you are on record bemoaning the preference of many art-lovers for listening to audio guides as they tour exhibitions.<\/p>\n
The perhaps unlikely answer is that you welcome the selfie-taker with outstretched arms, or at least give a convincing impression of doing so. \u201cNo, I don\u2019t have problem with that,\u201d says Cragg, albeit faintly, as if he\u2019s thinking about the people who might be crossing the threshold of his latest show, which just opened in London. \u201cPeople are bound to respond in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
My father thought sculpture was a very dull and unnecessary activity<\/p>\n
Liverpool-born Cragg, in a zip-up sweater and dark trousers, is a lean 76-year-old but could pass for 20 years younger. He has lived for many years in Wuppertal, Germany, exhibiting and teaching across the continent and collecting many honours to add to his 1988 Turner gong. He has had his own decided views and gone his own way since he told his father he wanted to be an artist as a teenager. \u201cHe said, \u2018What a waste of time and education!\u2019 My father was bitterly disappointed. He was an electrical engineer and worked on aircraft and thought sculpture was a very dull and unnecessary activity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cragg\u2019s problem with audio guides is that they get in the way of a spectator\u2019s relationship with an artwork. \u201cIf you have a picture on a wall,\u201d he says, \u201cit doesn\u2019t matter what the artist\u2019s intention was. A hundred people stand in front of it and they will tell you a hundred different things about it. The person comes with their education, background and abilities \u2013 and responds to what\u2019s in front of them. People interjecting all the time disturbs that direct dialogue with the artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cragg\u2019s work at Lisson Gallery. Photograph: George Darrell\/\u00a9 Tony Cragg, Courtesy Lisson Gallery<\/p>\n
Technological distractions aside, Cragg is pleased to be back in London. \u201cI\u2019ve lived abroad for the main part of my life, but I still feel very British. When I come back to Britain, immediately I\u2019m more relaxed. I love British humour. I love the weather. I love the food. I feel like I\u2019m back home, anyway.\u201d He still supports Liverpool FC and rues their recent form. \u201cSomeone once told me, as an artist you\u2019re only as good as your last show, and in football you\u2019re only as good as your last game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cragg\u2019s recent works include tall, free-standing forms that might gesture towards buckled or twisted skeletons. We are speaking just before his show opens and, as I watch them being wrestled into place, I think about artists on the road \u2013 musicians, say \u2013 and how much easier it is for the percussionist playing the triangle than the cellist. Of course, Cragg now has his own roadies. \u201cI have a fantastic team,\u201d he says. \u201cThey do everything. I arrived yesterday, moved things around for an hour, then left.\u201d You don\u2019t take your art on the plane with you then? \u201cI used to,\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n
When I was growing up, the French were \u2018Frogs\u2019 and the Germans were \u2018Krauts\u2019<\/p>\n
Cragg\u2019s early work included pieces that explicitly addressed issues in the land of his birth, including Riot, a frieze produced in the aftermath of the miners\u2019 strike in 1984 and clashes between police and youths in Brixton, London. \u201cI left Britain in 1977 at the beginning of the Thatcher period, and the destruction of the arts schools here, and a lot of other developments. It was a very extreme form of capitalism that paid no regard to the needs of the wider population.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has also used the motifs of the crown jewels and the union flag. What did he make of seeing the flag on lamp-posts during protests in the UK this summer? \u201cWell, it\u2019s very difficult to live abroad and then be critical about how people live in another situation. But the most bitter disappointment I had initially was Brexit. This idea of isolationism, stepping back \u2013 I think it\u2019s bad for the general population. It\u2019s sad. And then you feel tendencies which are very nationalistic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was growing up, the French were \u2018Frogs\u2019 and the Germans were \u2018Krauts\u2019. My parents were very unhappy that I went to Germany because of the war. But thanks to the Royal College, I went to France to work for a year and I realised, \u2018Hey, the food\u2019s not bad here!\u2019 I noticed the furniture and the way the French treated their families: wow! But everybody has a history. My children, who are German, have this terrible burden of their history on their shoulders, from their grandparents\u2019 generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although he didn\u2019t see eye to eye with his father about sculpture, Cragg considers it a waste of time to make busts of the famous, or the likeness of a horse. \u201cFor me, representing exactly what\u2019s in front of you is a senseless activity, a vain attempt by humans to parody or copy nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u2018Art makes life more livable\u2019 \u2026 Cragg in 2007. Photograph: David Kaluza\/Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say the sculptor fails to acknowledge masters like the 17th-century Italian Gian Lorenzo Bernini. But, he feels, the time for figurative sculptors to lay down their chisels is long overdue. Artists such as Auguste Rodin incorporated the ideas of Sigmund Freud into their work, says Cragg, and Marcel Duchamp, who took a urinal and called it art, introduced the readymade. \u201cWhen I was student, we realised that readymades were kind of running out of steam, but then people like Damien Hirst took it to another dimension with a shark in a tank.\u201d<\/p>\n Cragg\u2019s first job was in a laboratory and he\u2019s all for children studying Stem subjects, but says that without art lessons they\u2019ll struggle to visualise what they\u2019re learning. \u201cArt is one of the best ways for people to have a better existence. It makes life more livable. To ignore that, in a way that has happened in Britain, is almost criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n He still loves what he does, saying: \u201cI hate holidays. Twenty-five years ago, everybody needed a holiday. I spend a lot of time in Scandinavia so we found somewhere we can spend the summer in a very beautiful place where there\u2019s the ocean and nature \u2013 and a studio! That\u2019s perfect for me, it\u2019s my dream.\u201d<\/p>\n He shows me a list of new ideas on his phone and reads some out. \u201cFirst and Second, Recall, For a While, Long-stop, On and off, Way to Go, Path, Backtrack \u2026 I\u2019m not telling you these are future sculptures or anything. They are just things that tick through in the time I wake up.\u201d<\/p>\n Was that a month\u2019s worth of ideas? \u201cI hate to say it, but that was last night.\u201d<\/p>\n Cragg is astonished by the popularity of contemporary art, unimaginable when he was starting out. \u201cNow, everywhere you go has its own gallery. I live within an hour of 40 galleries showing contemporary art. But in Britain, there used to be just London. In France, only Paris. When I was in France, the arts bodies were trying to take modern art out into the countryside \u2013 but the people threw food at it!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s suppose that you are a Turner prize-winning sculptor, with more than 50 years in the game. One…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-305350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}