The
following day in the pits of depression I watched The South Bank Show documentary on Tracey Emin with Carol. I loved
the documentary and so did Carol who then spent the following two days reading
every book related to Emin in my library. The Documentary
was released at the end of January 2005, but I only decided to watched it a
year later. I had had an immense love/hate interest in Emin for nearly ten
years. In some ways our work was similar or came from a similar need to express
private 'truths' in our art. In an art world awash with professionals of the
most boring kind, Emin stood out because of her extrovert personality and guts
to create the art her psyche demanded without censorship. In fact it was this
rawness, lack of irony, and lack of professional calculation which made her
work stand out from the sea of machine made, impersonal and utterly academic
theory bound art of my day. There were literally hundreds of thousands of
artists making this kind of academic art that was utterly lifeless, over
designed and pompously blown up with ill digested theory - but there was only
one Tracey Emin. To attack her for not being able to paint or draw (which even
I thought she was hopeless at) or for being too personal and too much of a
celebrity was to miss the point entirely. You could have put a camera in front
of 90% of contemporary artists and just send people to sleep or reaching for
their remote controls. Tracey on the other hand was real, raw, untutored,
honest and had the common touch. As a person and as an artist she connected
with people on a level that was never condescending or obscure. Damien Hirst
was without doubt a better artist - but he just acted the drunken bore droning
on humourlessly about death. Whereas Tracey's conversation had many levels;
serious, funny, rude, sad, or pathetic. Identity art had been around for nearly
twenty years, but it had mostly been made by people with no identity worth
knowing. In many respects Tracey's art was very feminine, and much of the abuse
she had received had been because of the preconceptions/ prejudices people
unconsciously had about women. Her work taunted the viewers to expose their
bigotry, and invariably she succeeded. Tracey's earthy commonness exposed the
art world for the snobbish, elitist and bigoted world it actual was. Most
artists, curators and collectors live mundane lives the main thrust of which is
social climbing. Artists have for centuries used art to social climb, they
follow strict rules of etiquette laid down by the upper classes and they manage
their careers with all the cunning of a reader of Machiavelli’s The Prince.
Tracey's art and life were a spit in the face of such narrow minded uncreative
pompous bores. She was right when she said - she was her own best creation. In
fact it was Tracey the person, not really Tracey the artist who beguiled me so
much. In an art world run by bureaucrats, accountants, knaves, lick arses, and
actors - she was real. It is true that many of the formal aspects of her work
was derived by from artists like Munch, Kahlo, Beuys, Basquiat, Nauman, and
Lucas to just name a few of her influences. But her sheer force of personality
made these influences her own, and in many cases make her influences look like
pale imitations. I loved Tracey, just for being Tracey.