Social history versus art might well be the title of Tate Modern’s Tracy Emin A Second Life retrospective. 30 years ago her installation “My Bed” shot her to a tabloid fame and then gradually to national treasure though retaining her reputation as a “swearing, sexually aggressive provocateur.”
Her initial foray into conceptual art was taken initially as promiscuous boasting but was ultimately seen as a self-portrait of depression, following childhood neglect, abuse, rape at 13, and suicidal thoughts after a recent break-up.
Her oeuvre has been connected to women’s homespun, storytelling traditions from mining her abortion to other trauma. ‘She smashed taboos about women’s bodies, desires, abuse, periods, pregnancy.’
One reviewer wrote “The show is one extended howl of agony.” Another “Emin’s recent monumental paintings resemble an inner hellscape.”
“I could have loved my innocence” (2007)
“Just Like Nothing” (2009) (inscribed “You made me Feel like nothing”)
“Rape”, 2018
“You heard me Scream”, 2022.
Emin was treated for cancer in 2020 by the removal of many internal organs and now uses a stoma bag.
‘Emin tells her life as it is in a voice necessarily vehement, hectoring, narcissistic. This isn’t a criticism: autobiographical art, especially survivors’ tales, depends on an indomitable sense of self.”
“Art is for feeling not for looking”, she insists.
Born 3 July 1963 6.50 am London, to an unwed mother of Romani traveller descent and a Turkish-Cypriot father who had another family. She left school at 13, was raped at 13, later had two traumatic abortions and went through a suicidal phase.
She has a 12th house creative Sun Cancer trine a 4th house Neptune in Scorpio sextile (Uranus) Pluto Mars in Virgo – she dreamt of a happy home and ended up with ruthless, unkind Mars Pluto, which last would admittedly give her a do-or-die determination. But what is certainly her saving grace is an upfront and resolutely optimistic Jupiter in Aries in her 10th on the focal point of a yod inconjunct Mars sextile Neptune. An apex Jupiter would give her the confidence to promote herself, sometimes a touch too vigorously, but as a counter balance to her problems it would be a definite advantage. Her Saturn in the cusp of her 8th is square an intense Scorpio Moon and trine her Venus Mercury in Gemini – so emotional rejection would cut deep. Her Saturn is conjunct the centaur asteroid Chariklo, which carries the tale of eternal suffering. Algol, the destructive Fixed star, is in her 10th.
I would have to confess I struggle with conceptual art, Joseph Beuys etc, and can’t get a grip of Emin’s work at all. It’s not the darkness and unhappiness that is the problem it just does not feel like art to me. Goya’s dark paintings I get. This not so much.
I feel the same, Jaidy – it’s all the ways childhood difficulties express themselves and play out into adulthood. But with no filter and no apology.
I went to goldsmiths post YBA- Emin was huge even if Damien hirst sucked up most of the oxygen with his shark in formaldehyde- which, frankly, I don’t get. Emin speaks to me as a woman- she’s just like a writer who writes what she knows. I appreciate this look into her bc yeah, her art is like a howl of agony- if you’ve touched any of this kind of pain- you know… there are hundreds of books who speak the same story.