Customer Reviews

Tracey Emin

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I was looking forward to this book release and was quite disappointed when it finally came out. It's very thick which is it's best attribute, but the content gets boring fast. The sketches are very raw, very simple, and not very diverse in subject matter. 1,000 was far too many than was needed. 500 would have been too many. A 100 would have easily given you the basic idea. These are simple line drawings of figures, reproduced fairly small and with not much detail. This is for Emin completists only.

If we can assume for the moment that one of the most daunting enemies of art is fear, then Tracey Emin is contributing to the art world in ways that are anything but obvious. If art causes one to think, to wonder, and to move the artist's images in and out of one's own life, just to see how it fits, like furniture seeking its rightful position in the room, then the business of art is really all about seeding the imagination. Seeds must be honest, and honest art must be fearless. The art in this book is not always pretty and comfortable, but it is always thoughtful and honest and fearless. In the effort to appreciate art, people have cautioned that one should view the art - not the artist. That isn't possible in the case of Tracey Emin, because the art and the artist are inseparable entities. She is the art, and her honesty shines through like a diamond in a mud pie. I don't know Tracey Emin, but I do know that if I ever met her, I'd never forget her. This book might be most readily appreciated by artists who will not just find inspiration in images that haven't already been thought about as much as the ones thought about but supressed. If you're an artist, I can't promise that you'll feel good about the way Emin approches her art, but I'm reasonably sure that you'll feel good about the way you'll begin to approch yours.