Known for her intensely visceral, often autobiographical works, from figurative paintings like Is Nothing Sacred (2023) to “unsanitary” installations—her 1999 My Bed, made up of everyday detritus, was shortlisted for the Turner Prize—British artist Tracey Emin’s career traces a winding evolution, mirroring life’s inconsistencies, triumphs, and tragedies. Spanning a wide scope of media and subjects from the ’90s to today, Emin’s perspective is captured in all its glory in Paintings (Phaidon), available October 22.
Originally from the seaside town of Margate in Kent, England, the artist began her practice, in many ways, with David Bowie. At 15, Emin discovered the cover art for Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979), took inspiration from Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele, who died at 28 during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Schiele was only the entry point; soon Emin would immerse herself into picture making with reckless abandon.
The book showcases Emin’s prolific body of work (filling more than 300 pages) between an opening essay by critic Jennifer Higgie, “The Wound and the Healing,” which maps the artist’s transformation over the decades as a painter, and a conversation between Emin and actor David Dawson, which took place at Emin’s studio in Margate. Dawson, who starred opposite Harry Styles in the 2022 erotic drama My Policeman, opens their interview with the inquiry, “Does art begin with mystery?” riffing on a quote from German British painter Frank Auerbach.
“Does art begin with mystery?” Emin ponders. “No, I wouldn’t say so. I would think for Frank Auerbach it does because of the way he paints, whereas for me, it starts with an inner feeling, but not a mysterious feeling.
“Painting for me always answers a question I didn’t know before, as long as I’m honest.”
Though counted among the mid-’90s art darlings as one of advertising magnate Charles Saatchi’s YBAs (young British artists), Emin is defined not by the tastes of others but rather a keen dedication to inquiry and excavation of herself: body, mind, heart, spirit. Higgie describes Emin’s exaltation of painting as that of a spiritual practice.
Whether it’s discordant figurative paintings, monoprint drawings of Princess Diana, works in neon, or a three-week performance where she lived in a gallery with nothing but art materials, Emin’s career has bucked conventions and demure tastes from her earliest days to now with little intention to slow down. In 2020 the painter revealed she had been diagnosed with cancer, undergone surgery, and was in remission. Last December she required emergency surgery on her small intestine. Still, she continues to create. She quipped that male artists “sort of peak” in their 40s, comparing the art trajectories of the sexes to orgasms.
“They have just one; it’s like one massive ejaculation,” Emin said on a recent episode of The Louis Theroux Podcast. “Women just tend to come and come and come and come and come. So, as a woman, you carry on coming all your life until you’re old.”
Here, a menagerie of wares inspired by Emin’s approach to art and life:
Items selected by Nicole Chapoteau, Samantha Gasmer, Kia D. Goosby, Jessica Neises, Miles Pope, and Daisy Shaw-Ellis.
