Tracey Emin: Beyond the Autobiographical
British artist Tracey Emin (b.1963) holds a reputation as not only being a brutally honest storyteller but also a ‘psycho slut’ — to borrow words that Emin herself inscribed into her quilt artwork of the same title. Emin is not afraid to lay open her sexual exploits — one of her most outrageous works, My Bed (1998), figure 1, is an installation of her actual bed, strewn with everything from underwear to liquor bottles, condoms to cigarette ends. My Bed was shortlisted for the 1999 Turner prize; yet despite Emin’s wide-spread success and her celebrity-style fame, many critics consider her artistic approach to be naive or even generally insipid. It is perhaps because her artwork is so autobiographical and explicitly related to her sexual history that she constantly is described either as self-absorbed or unable to create work relevant to a broader human experience: “Eminocentric,” as one critic so concisely put it (Barber qtd in Munt 217).
But is it fair to say that Emin’s artwork is truly diminished by a myopic obsession with her past? After all — despite its self-oriented specificity, Emin’s work does address struggles common to women, though Emin rejects the ‘feminist’ label on her work (Betterton 34). This sensibility still didn’t stop her from collaborating in 2009–2010 with feminist sculptor Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911) on 16 mixed media paintings.
These works, while in adherence to Emin’s autobiographical framework, do connect her to the broader feminist tradition. Through the lens of Louise Bourgeois, Emin’s work can be interpreted as not only connected to her personal past, but also to the broader history of women.
The collaborative gouache paintings/drawings were shown in an exhibition entitled “Do Not Abandon Me” in 2011 at Hauser and Wirth (“Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin, Do Not Abandon Me”). Each piece contains a large nude torso, painted by Bourgeois. There are both female and male representations: the females with swollen, pregnant bellies; the males with erect penises. The torsos take up the majority of the picture plane and have a flowing, wash-like quality of paint application. It took Emin months of traveling with the paintings before she completed them, feeling daunted by “the baton being passed,” (Elmhirst 51). Eventually, Emin drew nude figures with text over the paintings. Emin’s scratchily-drawn figures are smaller, transforming the torsos into landscapes.
Despite both artists’ work residing on the same picture-plane, Emin was very specific in stating that the two images are not intrinsically linked to one another. No theme was predetermined by either artist, leaving each able to infuse her own personal meaning into the work. In an interview, when asked about the piece I wanted to love you more (2009–2010), figure 2, where Bourgeois’s torso seems to be pregnant with Emin’s figure, Emin said, “It’s Louise’s mother. The abandonment. It could be Louise saying: I lost my mother…I can’t speak for Louise…It might be birth to Louise but not birth to me. That’s what makes it interesting and clever. Because it’s two worlds, making one thing. It looks like we have the same language but we both say…it’s more complicated than one image,” (Frederique 39).
Despite the artistic differences and generational gap between Emin and Bourgeois, the two artists have much in common: Both artists’ biographies are highly pertinent to their work; both artists were first or second generation immigrants; and both had traumatic experiences connected to their fathers (Emin’s father was absent for much of her life, and Bourgeois’s father had a scandalous affair). Bourgeois’s The Destruction of the Father (1974) is a work directly attached to her feelings about her father’s affair (Bergstrom-Katz). Meanwhile, Emin, as established, utilizes biography exclusively in her artistic practice. Her famous appliquéd tent, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, 1963–1995 (1995), is a comprehensive list of both her sexual and platonic sleeping partners. Her mono-prints are also autobiographical, but in a less literal sense. Her mono-print If I could just go back and start again, (1995), figure 3, depicts Emin’s idea of what she looked like as an adolescent girl before her rape at 13 (Townsend 90).
The main difference between Emin and Bourgeois’s approaches to autobiography come from their separate cultural and generational contexts. Bourgeois tends to insert her autobiography into her work in a way that is detectable only if you are familiar with her personal past. Bourgeois worked in the 70’s where feminist artists were more concerned with a collective artistic practice that “challenge[d] the notion of individual genius,” (Betterton 34). Emin’s work, on the other hand, is blatantly connected to specific events in her past, a theme in alignment with the group The Young British Artists, who sought to enmesh themselves in the “bad behavior” side of pop-culture (Betterton 25).
Much of Emin’s autobiographical specificity and “bad girl” (Heartney et al.) imagery plays into her work with Bourgeois. Emin’s mono-print figures are almost the same as the ones she made for the collaboration with Bourgeois. Her mono-prints are all figurative, with the figures usually engaging in some sort of sexual exploit. In addition,her mono-prints are usually accompanied by text that is written as if spoken by Emin herself.
This use of sexual themes and text in monopirnt is seen in the piece Albert, Bert and Andy (I couldn’t stop it), (1997), figure 4. The print contains the crumpled figure of who we would suppose to be Emin, surrounded by the heads of her sexual partners/predators who are each labeled by name in her uppercase, sprawling handwriting. Above the figures is the text “And I couldn’t stop it”. This piece, as seen from the specificity of subject matter and our knowledge of Emin’s biography, is representative of an actual event in the artist’s past.
In the work for “Do Not Abandon Me,” a few figures still obviously represent Emin, like in I wanted to love you more. But in pieces like Come unto me, (2009–2010), figure 5, the figures are more generalized. Two figures kneel beneath the penis of Bourgeois’s painted torso. The penis has been transformed by Emin into a crucifix. Emin herself is not directly represented, but is replaced by metaphor; in an article she is paraphrased, saying that “she relates to the crucifixion as ‘a metaphor for love’ in a sense that love does not exist without pain,” (Frederique 37).
This use of metaphorical and generalized imagery is also used in Just Hanging (2009–2010), figure 6, where Bourgeois’s painted penis is now used as the support for a woman to hang herself. The woman’s lifeless figure could be representative of Emin, but isn’t inherently connected to Emin’s biography, considering that the artist is still alive. Also, the lack of text in both pieces removes the narration from strictly being Emin’s, and allows room for stronger play between Bourgeois and Emin’s imagery.
Both pieces, by visually playing off of Bourgeois’s universal imagery, have stepped out of the purely autobiographical and into the realm of metaphorical thematics. Both seem to be referencing the powerful, even godlike, manifestation of the male sex upon women, something that Emin has encountered personally due to sexual assault. The degrading and suicidal tendencies that occur from being subjected in such a way also arise in these images.
In the work for “Do Not Abandon Me,” there is a more delicate interplay of autobiographies. If Emin has proven capable to produce imagery that is broader, and not ‘Eminocentric,’ then why does she still choose to focus on herself? She is obviously capable of engaging in the broader topics of womanhood. Her choice not to participate still begs the question: Is Emin’s artwork diminished by her myopic obsession with her past?
In her book Queer Attachments: The Cultural Politics of Shame, Sally Munt referenced a Times review on Emin’s autobiography Strangeland (2005). The journalist said Emin has “a flair for noisy hyperbole[,] gimcrack philosophy/platitudinous guff[,] and [that] restraint is not a part of her creative vocabulary,” (Hitchens qtd in Munt 215).
In her book, Munt replied, “Emin is judged too harshly[,] because she is regarded as naively lacking the requisite amount of masculine irony and self-control deemed essential for classical artistic genius[.] One can almost hear the corset elastic snapping in his faux-Victorian idiom,” (Munt, 215). So to Munt, the critic’s altercations with Emin stem not from her work, but from her lack of masculinity and adherence to what is ostensibly Freud’s concept of the ‘hysterical woman’ (Townsend 98).
Emin allows herself to be seen as outrageous in her art for the sake of credibility. It is that allowance on the part of the artist to be viewed as naive, psychotic, slutty, and self-absorbed that truly solidifies Emin’s stance as an autobiographical artist. She doesn’t mask herself beneath “masculine irony,” but puts on the “bad girl,” allowing herself to embody all that is shameful.
Tracey Emin, in sum, is not truly self-absorbed. One writer put it quite concisely — Emin “feigns madness as a token of authenticity and creativity,” (Townsend 101). For Emin, it is all for the art, as it always has been.
Bibliography:
Bergstrom-Katz, Sasha. “In Focus: The Destruction of the Father (1974).” ArtSlant, 2008, https://www.artslant.com/la/articles/show/2711-in-focus-the-destruction-of-the-father-1974
Betterton, Rosemary. “Why is My Art Not as Good As Me?.” In The Art of Tracey Emin, ed. Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend, 23–39. New York, N.Y.: Thames & Hudson, 2002.
Eck, Katharina. 2012. “Protective Buildings, Exposed Bodies–The Femme Maison -Imagery in the Art of Louise Bourgeois.” Women’s Studies 41 (8)- 904–24. doi-10.1080/00497878.2012.718650
Elmhirst, Sophie. “Body Art.” New Statesman 140, no. 5041 (February 21, 2011)- 51. http-//search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bah&AN=58474458&site=ehost-live
Heartney, Eleanor, Helaine Posner, Nancy Princenthal, and Sue Scott. The Reckoning : Women Artists of the New Millennium. Munich: Prestel, 2013.
Joseph-Lowery, Frédérique. “Tracey Emin and her Dialogue with Louise Bourgeois”. Art Press no 374 (January 2011): 36–41. Accessed September 24, 2018. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aax&AN=505383755&site=ehost-live
“Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin, Do Not Abandon Me.” Hauser & Wirth. Accessed October 8, 2018. https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/3666-louise-bourgeois-tracey-emin-do-not-abandon-me\
Luke, Ben. “Drawn Together but Poles Apart.” Evening Standard, February 18, 2011. http///search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nfh&AN=58473926&site=ehost-live
Munt, Sally R.. Queer Attachments / The Cultural Politics of Shame. Abingdon/ Routledge, 2008. Accessed September 14, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Osborne, Peter. “Greedy Kunst.” In The Art of Tracey Emin, ed. Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend,Thames & Hudson, 2002, 40–59.
Townsend, Chris. “Heart of Glass.” In The Art of Tracey Emin, ed. Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend, Thames & Hudson, 2002, 79–101.
