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I think it's about time somebody made a remark about local artist Tracey Emin. Granted she's not local to Dover, she comes from Thanet, but she manages to get her face on local BBC news quite often and loves to style herself as one of the most controversial female artists of our times. In case you don't know her, she's the one who sold her unmade bed for many thousands of pounds as a work of art. She's also responsible for one of the worst films ever made - EVER - which the BBFC gave an 18 certificate much to her annoyance. She stitched a load of names into a tent, in a piece called Everyone I Have Ever Slept With. One of her works features bloodied tampons and tissues. It is every bit as vulgar as it sounds. There is even a, ahem, "work of art" on sale for £20 on Ebay apparently which consists of nothing more than a rude word that Emin sent by text to some bloke called David.
I saw a critical slamming of her film this evening by the BBC's Mark Kermode, who revealed that Emin will leave England and move to France if she is forced to pay higher taxes (like the rest of us have to), which he rather amusingly cited as one of the benefits of tax rises.
I have for a long time loathed the work of this woman, who sells whatever crap pops into that bewildered head of hers as modern art. As an artist, she is (somehow) commercially successful, but I put this fact down to her audience being every bit as deluded as she is herself. Her mentality seems to be that she can have any stupid idea she wants, attach a tenuous link to vulgar female sexuality to it, and it becomes art. In my view, she deliberately engineers her work to be controversial for the sake of it. At no time have I ever found any of her work challenging or though-provoking other than it forcing me to question why she bothers. Oh yes, I know why - it makes her rich. As for her link to feminism, really, I ask you, does she project the voice of the modern feminist? Really? If she does then she gives feminists an absolutely awful image with her tacky, shambolic work.
I'm sure she's a nice person in reality but as an artist Emin sells her ego in works that are simply astounding in their awfulness. The photo Just Part of Me represents part of this; her work is all about herself, like she's an important spokesperson on the modern woman and her sexual aspirations, and her mission to represent her own femininity as some form of abstract monstrosity is ugly in the extreme. Entertainment gives us what we want; art gives us what we need. Tracey Emin gives us something else entirely, although I haven't quite worked out what it is. Perhaps what Emin has given us is proof that the art world is willing to accept, embrace, and pay for human detritus such that she has revealed the modern definition of "art" to mean something new. Perhaps art is no longer about challenging society's views but simply flogging whatever rubbish you can get away with. So it seems.