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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Mad Tracey from Margate

Shrug: Butcher Boy
(prev. Green My Eyes)

23:30 / 16.04.07

I recently wrote a short piece on Tracey Emin, someone who I'd always had a pretty tangible interest in (as likeably anarchic) but also an artist of whose oeuvre I had little knowledge. Pleasantly, I discovered how much I liked her artwork. Upon writing the piece, as media figure (and variform confessional artist) I didn't really know where to begin.

Applicqued quilts, abortions, Billy Childish? Should I discuss the tabloidese caterwauls of "Is this art?" or her subsequent construction as yBa effigy? Even as a contemparaneous (and still active) artist the possiblities were many and I began to feel a little exhausted. I eventually decided to speak about (to use a perhaps unforgiveable cliche) those works that spoke to me.
I talked about her piece "My Bed". Discussed the relational paradigm between woman as high art (object) and low personage (subject). Woman's bodies as (traditionally) read as the site of sex much like 'a bed', use of possesive nomenclature, absenting of the female body from the piece, her 'fuck you' to the postmodern, showing not telling, concretizing rather than abstracting and a little about 'abjection' for good measure.

I talked about her Stockholm piece, later "Excorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made", subversion of the scopophillic element (that which Laura Mulvey or, indeed, Lacan speaks of).
I touched on her drawings (There's Something Wrong) almost Roald Dahl like, in my mind, and her wonderful neon pieces.
The point of which, being, I'd be interested in knowing the opinion of the 'lith with regard to La Emin, if anyone cares to....

There is a previous thread more focused on "My Bed" specifically than a full discussion of her work, which in the heat of her Tate "Is this art. Pshaw." nomination I'm not sure would be particularly conducive to a developing conversation (IMHO the mediation in all her work is a given) but if this is outside protocol MODS feel free to delete...

10:24 / 17.04.07

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/tracey_emin_my_bed.htm

That's not art, it's a fucking mess.

Send me a pound.

10:47 / 17.04.07

I love the bed! It's perfect.

Shrug: Butcher Boy
(prev. Green My Eyes)

10:54 / 17.04.07

%%?

There was a specific focus on "My Bed's" worth as art here guitar girl.

Have you seen her other work??

Shrug: Butcher Boy
(prev. Green My Eyes)

11:01 / 17.04.07

Also (x-post).

However, I do think "My Bed" is such a cleverly intentioned piece, probably, in some sure way constructed to provoke exactly this kind of polarised reaction, from the old lady who appeared with cleaning materials to the two performance artists who jumped on it.

Wiki link here.

Send me a pound.

11:11 / 17.04.07

"Everyone I have Ever Slept With 1963–1995" is one of my favourite pieces of art. The wombiness of the tent mixed with the all those mixed emotions reay does it for me. I mean, the feeings of safety from the tent really contrast with emotional rawness of naming her two aborted babies.

I find it hard to talk about this piece, it affects me on a realy visceral level and I just want to shout "it's very good" over and over again without really analysing it.

aim for joviality

11:15 / 17.04.07

I love her work. I read the book she brought out last year, Strangeland, and I was really impressed. There seems to be a ruthlessness in her willingness to make her experiences public and I think she has great ability to convey the matter of her experiences. I think her work touches people because so many people have pain which they repel from their everyday mind - like Alice Miller's writing on children's tragedies. Instead Emin turns hers into beauty and money. She recounts in the book how she first started making money from art, by putting together autobiographical episodes for subscribers paying £20 for each (if I remember the details correctly).

I love that her way of exposing the her life experiences is a fight back against the silencing and shame that seems to be expected of people who have experienced the kinds of traumas she has. So many people have their lives wrecked by similar things, and instead of hers being wrecked she finds ways through to make success by making art from her experiences. Very relevant to Barbelith given recent discussion about the huge numbers of people who live with the effects of bad sexual experiences and the secrecy that surrounds it (in SBR forum thread, P&H).

I just found this essay by Sarah Kent, which I like, I was interested the points about her being a woman creating nudes and the obscenity objections because I think it go along with what you point to, Shrug's Gotta Have it!, with your high art <-> low personage point.

I for one would love if it were possible for people to post and to stay with Shrug's Gotta Have it!'s intention to resist the 'but is it art' question.

11:27 / 17.04.07

Sorry folks, I just can't see art in a pile of smelly dirty stained knickers, bedsheets and condoms at all. If shit like that is art, then my sons bedroom should bring in a fortune!!

aim for joviality

11:40 / 17.04.07

Great, do feel free to carry on with that conversation in the thread that's appropriate to it, as has previously been pointed out.

11:50 / 17.04.07

Terribly sorry, I missed that link

Janean Patience

12:01 / 17.04.07

I expected to like My Bed before I saw it at the Saatchi - I liked the idea, I like the way objects and rooms accrete a history of their owners and users over time and to put this directly into the gallery was very YBA - but it did nothing for me. It was just there, the intention of it more interesting than the reality, and I think good art should have a presence of its own.

I think that's the only major piece of Emin's I've seen and the minor pieces I've encountered in mixed shows haven't impressed either. I liked her Trafalgar Sqare plinth proposal, the Cortina covered in birdshit, but the Liverpool sparrow seemed to be missing the point when outside. It underwhelmed, probably deliberately, but that forestalled any other reaction to it.

I guess I'm saying I want to like Tracey's work but so far I don't. What's good and accessible?

West Baltimore Hausing Project

01:50 / 18.04.07

Princess Swashbuckling mentions "Everyone I have Ever Slept With 1963–1995", which I think is on display at the Saatchi, and which is a good example of Emin's craft-based, intensely personal approach, I think...

Any other recommendations? Where are you based would probably be the next question, but we can talk generally about pieces, or about approaches - say, her quilting work or her writing pieces...

Janean Patience

09:41 / 18.04.07

"Everyone I have Ever Slept With 1963–1995", which I think is on display at the Saatchi, and which is a good example of Emin's craft-based, intensely personal approach, I think...

Unfortunately that particular piece got burned in a fire as did Tracey's beach hut...

I'm in the North of the UK though I go to galleries in London a couple of times a year. I could try her writing or her movies, both of which are more immediately accessible than the art through the magic of mass reproduction, but she's an artist first and I suspect I'd enjoy the supplementary work more if I'd already enjoyed the art. What other major work has she done? There's nothing coming to mind. Her cartoons are quite lovely but again, I don't feel they're the point somehow.

West Baltimore Hausing Project

11:14 / 18.04.07

Oh, bum. Did that go in the Saatchi fire? For some reason I thought it had survived. Knackers - the hut I knew had gone...

However... hmmm. Full disclosure on this one - I don't actually like a lot of Emin's art, on an aesthetic level. However, on the beach hut, how about The Last Thing I Said to You was Don't Leave Me Here I, which I think is in the Tate Modern? I like her neons, examples of which are shown above, although the debt they owe to Bruce Naumann is distractingly huge.

Oh! And apparently I totally missed a dirty great flag she has put up over Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank, until July 31st. Cheers, Google News Search.

One's best bet, maybe, would be to wait for the Saatchi to reopen.

(Sorry for incompleteness - I am at work, and any search for Emin art is likely to get NSFW pretty quickly).

Glenn Ponder & Lazarus
(prev. Glenn: douchegate veteran)

14:06 / 18.04.07

Emin will be representing Britain in the Venice Biennale this year, which is perhaps the highest accolade that can go to a British artist (far bigger than, say, the Turner Prize).

Me, I remain pretty unconvinced by her work. Not in the 'is it art?' sense (if she claims it is, it is), but in the sense that it is so dependent on our continued fascination with her. Her autobiographical approach worked very well in the early works (the tent, for example, and her shop project with the far better Sarah Lucas), but there is a law of diminishing returns here that's similar to that we encounter with some musicians. The more famous they get (and Emin, still unusually for an artist, in genuinely famous), and the further they get from the circumstances that informed their early practice, the less interesting and convincing their continued thematic engagement with those circumstances becomes.

It's worth noting that Emin - unlike Hirst, Lucas, Martin Creed, Douglas Gordon, Liam Gillick etc - is a British artist who's not hugely acclaimed outside Britain. Perhaps there's a strain of provincialism in her work, or perhaps there are other, better artists on the international stage who are seen to be covering some of the same territory more effectively (Erik Van Lieshout, for example). Will be interesting to see if Venice impacts on this.

16:47 / 18.04.07

From Wikipedia:
The result was Emin's famous "tent" Everyone I have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, which was first exhibited in the show. It was a blue tent, appliquéd with the names of everyone she has slept with. These included sexual partners, plus relatives she slept with as a child, her twin brother, and her two aborted children. Although often talked about as a shameless exhibition of her sexual conquests, it was rather a piece about intimacy in a more general sense, although the title invites misinterpretation.

The part I put in italics is worth noting. I like art that makes me think and feel, especially together. Emin's work does that for me.

Fable of the Bees:Me, I remain pretty unconvinced by her work. Not in the 'is it art?' sense (if she claims it is, it is), but in the sense that it is so dependent on our continued fascination with her. Her autobiographical approach worked very well in the early works

I think the point is that her personal experience is so common to many, women and men, that takes it out of the context of autobiography. Being able to intimately examine her, leaves us all a little vulnerable, by exposing the pandemic nature of her reality.

Just my opinion, however.

Janean Patience

13:45 / 20.04.07

Haus: Apparently I totally missed a dirty great flag she has put up over Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank, until July 31st.

Tracey's flag actually helps crystallise my position on her. I can't find a picture to post here, unfortunately, but it's an off-white flag decorated with a bunch of sperm swimming, in perspective, into the middle distance. Over that there are the words, in red, "ONE SECRET TO SAVE EVERYTHING."

Justrix: I like art that makes me think and feel, especially together. Emin's work does that for me.

That's my whole juxt; it doesn't do that for me. I haven't seen the flag in person so it may provoke a reaction if I do but at this mediated distance it leaves me unmoved. I've only ever seen one Jenny Holzer in person but from the moment I glimpsed the Truisms and Survivor Series in the background of some photos my stepbrother had taken of himself in New York (a trip he won on a Blockbusters Gold Run, incidentally) I was fascinated. The words, meaningless in themselves, and the context triggered something. Made me think and feel.

I compare that to Tracey's work here because again there's simplicity, a gnomic statement displayed in an unusual context, and this time it means nothing to me. What does she mean by that? Why the sperm? Why is this on a flag? Is she advertising that she wants that secret or that she has it? How does this fit in with her own life, which is often the focus of her work? I find it difficult even to come up with questions because it all leaves me so untouched. I guess this paragraph is evidence that it makes me think, but all I'm thinking is "Why don't I get Tracey Emin?"