The career of Tracey Emin, one of the best known contemporary British artists, has become a potent symbol of the relationship between art and celebrity in our time. When it was exhibited in London at the Tate in 1999, her now notorious installation My Bed was denounced by conservative critics as a national scandal, but this and her other work have continued to attract ever larger audiences. Whether storming drunkenly out of live television debates, talking tearfully about her abortions or modelling evening gowns for Vivienne Westwood, Tracey Emin makes headlines. Yet if Emin is now universally recognized as a media phenomenon, her work has also begun to attract serious critical attention. In The Art of Tracey Emin, distinguished critics from Britain and the United States explore her various artistic influences, for example Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele, and the separate parts of her oeuvre - her installations (most notably My Bed and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With), her film and video works, and her monoprints. The final essay takes the form of an interview with the artist.
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About the Author
Mandy Merck is Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her latest book is In Your Face: Nine Sexual Studies. Chris Townsend is a lecturer in the Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London. His publications include Vile Bodies: Photography and the Crisis of Looking.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Refreshingly open-minded responses to Tracey Emin's art,
By cathy earnshaw (Berlin, Germany) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Art of Tracey Emin (Paperback)
This collection contains 10 essays on Tracey Emin's art, which are complemented by over 50 black-and-white illustrations of her drawings, blankets, installations and video-work. It culminates in a fifteen-page interview with Emin herself.
Given that Emin's art often seems to provoke snobbish elitism and prejudices in many contemporary art critics - "it's childishly solipsistic", "too hermetically self-absorbed to be a great artist," etc. - it is absolutely refreshing that the critics in this collection approach her work seriously and without pedantry. The collection transcends those tedious "but it is art?" discussions that Guardian critics love to table and elevates debate on the tensions between autobiography and constructionism in her art to a new level. They place Emin's work in an art-historical context, revealing how artists such as Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Gerhard Richter and Hannah Wilke have all influenced and informed her work up to now. The most fascinating essay, I think, is Peter Osborne's analysis of Emin's photographic print "I've got it all, 2000", where Emin is sitting on the floor in a low-cut dress, looking down at the hoard of coins and notes she's holding onto between her bare, parted legs. The print is ambiguous, its title self-consciously ironic - is she stuffing her vagina with money (money as dildo, money as orgasm)? Or is the money penetrating her (money f*$!s with you, money f*$!s you over)? Or is it exuding from her like faeces or a child? A few critics in the collection might take Emin's work a little too seriously; the best integrate its playful, ironic or humorous elements (Emin talks in the interview, for instance, of a film which she always wanted to make: "I wanted to be walking along a beach and then do a poo and bury it"). Emin seems to like paradoxes and tensions that trouble - "Love Poem, 1996", for example, is an appliqué blanket on which Emin has stitched a poem of hers equating sex with violence ("You put your hand / across my mouth still / the noise continues"). Emin strikes me as a very misunderstood artist, not as wildly controversial as her cultish supporters, and not as uninformed by artistic traditions as her detractors, would have us believe. This collection constitutes a considerable step towards demystifying her art. Warmly recommended!
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Emperor has no clothes...,
By Sorek "Zendude" (Tel Aviv) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Art of Tracey Emin (Paperback)
Tracey Emin could be a character right out of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead," one of Ellsworth Toohey's 'proteges,' a person of little or no real artistic talent foisted upon a gullible public as an "art superstar," to quote one fashion magazine. I've seen her 'work'...pretentious rubbish that any idiot could do, if his or her pride was sufficiently low. What is gained by lowering the standards of art?
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A poor introduction, a mediocre supplement, three stars.,
By
This review is from: The Art of Tracey Emin (Paperback)
Typical deignful art critic mumbo jumbo. Above all else, the colors are black and white, robbing them of one of the most important elements. Sometimes I think they tried really hard, but in the end I believe it is an inferior product given the options you have as a consumer. Buy Tracey's book and then buy this one and let me know what you think.
Bravo.
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