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TRACEY EMIN CBE RA (B. 1963)
GRAND HOTEL I, 2016
SIGNED, TITLED AND NUMBERED 87/100 IN PENCIL
POLYMER GRAVURE ETCHING IN COLOURS ON 300GSM WOVE PAPER
SHEET 54.4CM/45.5CM
PUBLISHED BY EMIN INTERNATIONAL, LONDON
GBP 5,500
Enquire
DISCOVERING TRACEY EMIN: QUEEN OF THE (NOW NOT SO) ‘YOUNG BRITISH ARTISTS’
Explore the raw brilliance of Tracey Emin, CBE, RA — from ground-breaking installations to signed prints — with our quickfire guide to one of Britain’s most notorious artists.
Once dubbed the “enfant terrible” of the Young British Artists (YBAs), Tracey Emin has been a leading figure in contemporary art since the 1990s. Revered for her brutal honesty, she draws heavily from her lived experience to create confessional, confrontative works that provoke dialogue.
She works in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, installation, sculpture, neon, film, photography, and appliqué. With personal references that include poverty, childhood neglect, teenage rape, sexual promiscuity and abortion, her work can be as shocking to the onlooker as it is blisteringly emotive. For in holding up a mirror to her own life, Emin regularly reveals parts of our own self that, maybe, truly, we’d rather didn’t exist.
FROM UNMADE BED TO INTERNATIONAL FAME
Emin achieved international recognition with the ground-breaking installations, ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995’ (a tent appliquéd with the names of all 102 of the artist’s former bedfellows) and the iconic ‘My Bed, 1988’. Conceived after a relationship’s traumatic breakdown and the severe depression that followed, ‘My Bed’ featured the artist’s unmade bed, strewn with the sordid debris of a life on the edge. Empty vodka bottles, discarded condoms, cigarette ends, stained sheets and used underwear: here was Emin, exposed for all to see.
“I realised I was my work, I was the essence of my work – I always say that after I’m dead my work isn’t going to be half as good.”
TRACEY EMIN, THE SOUTH BANK SHOW, 2001
TRACEY EMIN: TURNER PRIZE NOMINEE
An unnerving interrogation of the female psyche, ‘My Bed’ earned Emin a deserved Turner Prize nomination in 1999. The following year it was bought by Charles Saatchi for a reported £150,000; when it subsequently resurfaced at Christie’s in 2014, it went for £2.5million to the German collector, Count Duerckheim. Currently, on a 10-year loan to the Tate, it’s been shown at Tate Britain and Turner Contemporary.
Born in 1963, Tracey Emin grew up in Margate. As a teenager, she discovered the Expressionists Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele, and “fell in love” with their work’s self-effacing defiance. That both men were unafraid of intense emotional and physical self-reflection, regardless of how that might ‘negatively’ impact the overall aesthetic, proved hugely inspirational to the young artist.
“…the most beautiful thing is honesty, even if it’s really painful to look at…”
TRACEY EMIN
EMIN, SCHIELE AND MUNCH: THE LANDMARK EXHIBITIONS
In 1987, Emin left Margate to study at the Royal College of Art, London, where she earned an MA in painting. In the intervening years, she has spoken widely of her enduring admiration of Munch & Schiele and become an authority on both. This long-held fascination has led to two self-curated landmark exhibitions: the first, ‘Tracey Emin/Egon Schiele: Where I Want to Go’ (The Leopold Museum, Vienna, 2015), saw Emin fulfil her lifelong ambition to exhibit alongside the Austrian Expressionist. And in 2021, Emin produced ‘The Loneliness of the Soul’ at the Royal Academy of Arts. Another radical double-act, the exhibition featured 18 of Munch’s oils and watercolours, together with 25 of Emin’s most recent paintings, neons and sculptures.
“I look at myself, and I paint myself, but they’re portraits of my mind, of my deepest thoughts.”
TRACEY EMIN, 2015
TRACEY EMIN PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS AND SIGNED PRINTS
TRACEY EMIN CBE RA (B. 1963)
GRAND HOTEL I, 2016
SIGNED, TITLED AND NUMBERED 87/100 IN PENCIL
POLYMER GRAVURE ETCHING IN COLOURS ON 300GSM WOVE PAPER
SHEET 54.4CM/45.5CM
PUBLISHED BY EMIN INTERNATIONAL, LONDON
GBP 5,500
Enquire
TRACEY EMIN: AN OUTSPOKEN GENIUS?
Elected to the Royal Academy in 2005, two years later, Emin became only the second British female artist to have a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale’s British Pavilion. In 2008 her first major retrospective was held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and in 2013 she was awarded a CBE. And yet, despite her many achievements, the art world remains divided. Like her YBA contemporary, Damien Hirst, Emin is viewed by some critics as a base, unskilled charlatan. To her fans, she is the unwavering genius whose fearless self-focus demands the same of the viewer, no matter how unsettling or painful that might be.
So, which camp do you fall into?
