{"id":362728,"date":"2026-03-28T13:20:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T13:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/362728\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T13:20:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T13:20:25","slug":"tracey-emins-cult-of-the-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/362728\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracey Emin\u2019s Cult of the Self"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014 There\u2019s an unsettling sensation of reading someone\u2019s personal diary upon entering Tracey Emin\u2019s retrospective A Second Life<\/a> at Tate Modern, for that\u2019s what her entire body of work is. The Young British Artists movement (YBAs) \u2014 of which she and Damien Hirst were perhaps the loudest figures in the 1990s \u2014 was once described as a mere footnote in art history, but today that\u2019s no longer the case; Emin is now a Dame and was professor of drawing at the Royal Academy from 2011 to 2013. Nevertheless, her work has no art historical anchor: There is no socio-political commentary, no observations about British life or womanhood, nor any subject that lies outside of the immediate orbit \u2014 or literal body \u2014 of Tracey Emin herself.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, there is scant context, history, or curatorial commentary accompanying the works on view, though they are arranged loosely chronologically. There is a single introductory panel outside the show\u2019s entrance \u2014 obscured by the ticket checker\u2019s desk \u2014 outlining her themes as \u201clove, desire, loss, and grief,\u201d but no further biographical detail other than accolades following her nomination for the Turner Prize in 1999.<\/p>\n

In short, the art speaks for itself. Except it doesn\u2019t. The written words are what speak: those covering her blankets and chairs and innumerable pages of innermost thoughts, such as her \u201cTracey Emin C.V.\u201d (1995). And, of course, there are the titles of the works which, for many, provide their only form of context.<\/p>\n

\"\"Tracey Emin, “Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made” (1996), performance and multimedia installation<\/p>\n

The words that appear most frequently are \u201cI,\u201d \u201cYou,\u201d and \u201cMe,\u201d showing us Emin\u2019s consistent focus on the intimate experiences of her own body and mind \u2014 for the identity of the \u201cYou\u201d remains unimportant, and perhaps intentionally so, as it is never made explicit whom she is addressing. The less said about the paintings, the better, for they are not so much attempts at representation in the sense of art as we usually know it as they are rather desperate stabs and slashes of blood red, white, dripping navy, and black. There is a recreation of her debris-filled chaos of a studio entitled \u201cExorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made\u201d (1996), and indeed, her paintings appear to be literal exorcisms of her own experiences. The title of one painting, \u201cRape\u201d (2018), gives its subject the entire context and therefore its meaning, and from thence its raw, emotional power. Without the words, Emin\u2019s images, for all their visual rawness and anguish, are obscure and redundant.<\/p>\n

This is art as therapy. It should be exempt from the usual modes of criticism: how technically proficient it is, what we can learn from it, or what Emin is saying to her audience, because it is conceived entirely as a means of self-exploration, and, in the case of traumatic events such as abortions and sexual assaults, a means of reclaiming her own body. This is something many survivors will powerfully identify with, and a caption at the exit details helplines for those seeking support for cancer, mental health, and sexual abuse.<\/p>\n

\"\"Tracey Emin, “Rape” (2018), acrylic on canvas<\/p>\n

Should we as an audience be looking at the intimate personal pain of this woman, though? If the art were framed or curatorially contextualized as speaking for women or victims of abuse, and the horrors women and their bodies go through, then yes, we should; we can empathize with and learn from it in solidarity. Except it is not: Emin wants us to see absolutely everything, unabashedly, as her art. What emerges is a kind of cult of the self, which is perhaps why Emin out of all the YBAs resonates most with today\u2019s audiences. In the era of Instagram, social media encourages the unhealthy need to validate and curate oneself and one\u2019s bodily experiences publicly, as if such things only exist when broadcast and liked by followers. Take a sequence of Polaroids detailing Emin\u2019s body post-stoma surgery from 2020 to 2025; every inch of bloodied self is snapped individually, in close detail, from genitals to stoma to face. The fact that images of this sequence (the non-intimate ones only) are available for purchase in the gift shop speaks to the way in which we increasingly worship at the altar of our very navels.<\/p>\n

\"\"Postcards of Tracey Emin’s Stoma photographs series (2020\u20132025) in the gift shop<\/p>\n

We arrive at a reconstruction of Emin\u2019s unmade bed, which was sensationally nominated for the Turner Prize. Its controversy cannot be overstated: it is the sort of thing that an art school student who spent all night partying instead of making work would submit for their thesis show, and yet it received the ultimate recognition, doubly cemented by its purchase<\/a> by advertising executive Charles Saatchi. This legitimized the notion that one need not be able to draw to become a successful artist (see also the sub-Rodin style mini-bronzes, or the sub-Yves Klein blue body print paintings in the show), but possess an unshakeable and bulldozing focus on one\u2019s own self. Far from being a footnote in contemporary British art, Emin has spearheaded the trend for extreme self-introspection coupled with relentless self-promotion. The queue for entry into this absolutely packed show demonstrates what a success that combination has become in today\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

Tracey Emin: A Second Life<\/a> continues at Tate Modern (Bankside, London, England) through August 31. The exhibition was curated by Maria Balshaw, Alvin Li, and Jess Baxter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 There\u2019s an unsettling sensation of reading someone\u2019s personal diary upon entering Tracey Emin\u2019s retrospective A Second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-362728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}