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In the film Eroica (2003) the elderly Joseph Haydn, played by Frank Finlay, listens to a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. The music disturbs and puzzles him. When asked his opinion he says, “He’s placed himself at the centre of his work. He gives us a glimpse into his soul. I expect that’s why it’s so noisy.” Never was there a more apt description of the dawning of the Romantic Age. It’s all about the artist.
Art moves on and times change. But in the case of Tracey Emin, art is still relentlessly all about the artist. This massive retrospective show will surely attract the crowds and be discussed widely. It charts Emin’s 40-year career of ruthless self-examination. There is the famous My Bed (1998) of course, complete with stains, discarded tissues, cigarette butts and vodka bottle, but also many new paintings from her recent return to that medium. There is video, textiles, neons, sculpture, installations and a huge amount of writing. How one responds to it all will be governed by to what extent one thinks the actual life of an artist is instructive, interesting and meaningful.
My Bed (1998). Installation
There is great emphasis not just on Tracey Emin the person but also her physical being. Bodily functions are laid bare. In her 1995 film, Why I Never Became a Dancer, she relates her introduction to casual sex with several men in her early teens. “It never crossed my mind to ask them what the attraction was,” she says, “I knew. Sex was what it was.” In many small bronzes the naked female figure lies, legs apart, exposed and vulnerable. Aspects of sex, in fact, are an almost constant theme. A recent large painting, You Keep Fucking Me (2024) has the couple depicted clumsily in red outline and the title repeated obsessively in blue capitals across the entire top half of the composition. One wonders whether Emin’s frequent resort to the written word is compensation for her unconvincing skill with the brush.
As for vulnerability, Exploration of the Soul (1994) features 32 pages of hand-written accounts of much of Emin’s early life. It is unflinching in its detail. In one she relates how, as a little girl, she was invited to a school friend’s birthday party. All done up in a party dress and taking a little gift, she arrived only to be told by the girl’s father, “No, you are not invited.” She pretended to her mother that all had been well, but that night she cried herself to sleep.
In another film, the 1996 How It Feels, Emin stands on a street corner and for 23 minutes tells the viewer in a detailed matter-of-fact way of her traumatic experience of an abortion when she was 21, and of the conflicting emotions associated with the event. Several of the later paintings refer back to this, blood oozing from between the thighs, and echoing some of Paula Rego’s late angry work. Emin pursues the subject in detail in the embroidered blanket The Last of the Gold (2002), an A to Z instruction panel of advice to women in similar circumstances.
The Last of the Gold, 2002 Embroidered Blanket.Detail from The Last of the Gold, 2002 Embroidered Blanket.
The abortion was followed by an emotional crisis which forced Emin to stop painting in 1990. “The smell of the oil paints and the turps made me feel physically sick, and even after my termination, I couldn’t paint. It’s like I needed to punish myself by stopping the thing I loved doing the most.” An installation, Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (1996) is a large cuboid space into which visitors can look but not enter. It is in the form of the artist’s cluttered studio which Emin locked herself into for three weeks trying to work through her feelings of guilt towards the medium she had abandoned.
The second major calamity in Emin’s life was her 2020 diagnosis of an aggressive bladder cancer. She underwent radical surgery to remove several internal organs. Thankfully she appears to have fully recovered and lives with a stoma bag. Again, this is documented in detail. A display of dozens of close-up colour photographs leaves the viewer in no doubt about the pain and indignity she has suffered.
From the series Self-portraits (2020-25) documenting the fitting of Emin’s stoma bag following surgery.From the series Self-portraits (2020-25) documenting Emin’s fitting of a stoma bag following surgery.
However much one might sympathise with the difficulties Emin has encountered, the self-absorption goes to worrying lengths. The viewer is faced with titles of works, or announcements within works, such as I Am the Last of My Kind, There is No More Me and You Made Me Feel Like Nothing. Not one piece in the show is about any subject other than herself.
We live in a confessional, egocentric age. A time when the President of the United States prefers to address the world through his own internet platform; an age when hordes of cinema goers take to social media to advertise how they sobbed through the last half-hour of Hamnet. Into this world of confessional self-exposure the art of Tracey Emin fits perfectly.
Of course, great art can grow from seeds of autobiography. In a Mahler symphony one might hear a bugle call, echoing the composer’s childhood in the vicinity of an army barracks, or cowbells reflecting his love of the Austrian Alps. Much of D. H. Lawrence’s life finds its way into the novels. But in these cases, because of the level of artistry involved, the personal transcends to the universal, the individual to the collective, and we better understand the human condition as a whole. Tracey Emin’s work, despite her searing honesty and good intentions, does not make this leap.
Tracey Emin: A Second Life.
Tate Modern, 27th February to 31st August 2026.
In the film Eroica (2003) the elderly Joseph Haydn, played by Frank Finlay, listens to a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. The music disturbs and puzzles him. When asked his opinion he says, “He’s placed himself at the centre of his work. He gives us a glimpse into his soul. I expect that’s why it’s so noisy.” Never was there a more apt description of the dawning of the Romantic Age. It’s all about the artist.
Art moves on and times change. But in the case of Tracey Emin, art is still relentlessly all about the artist. This massive retrospective show will surely attract the crowds and be discussed widely. It charts Emin’s 40-year career of ruthless self-examination. There is the famous My Bed (1998) of course, complete with stains, discarded tissues, cigarette butts and vodka bottle, but also many new paintings from her recent return to that medium. There is video, textiles, neons, sculpture, installations and a huge amount of writing. How one responds to it all will be governed by to what extent one thinks the actual life of an artist is instructive, interesting and meaningful.
There is great emphasis not just on Tracey Emin the person but also her physical being. Bodily functions are laid bare. In her 1995 film, Why I Never Became a Dancer, she relates her introduction to casual sex with several men in her early teens. “It never crossed my mind to ask them what the attraction was,” she says, “I knew. Sex was what it was.” In many small bronzes the naked female figure lies, legs apart, exposed and vulnerable. Aspects of sex, in fact, are an almost constant theme. A recent large painting, You Keep Fucking Me (2024) has the couple depicted clumsily in red outline and the title repeated obsessively in blue capitals across the entire top half of the composition. One wonders whether Emin’s frequent resort to the written word is compensation for her unconvincing skill with the brush.
As for vulnerability, Exploration of the Soul (1994) features 32 pages of hand-written accounts of much of Emin’s early life. It is unflinching in its detail. In one she relates how, as a little girl, she was invited to a school friend’s birthday party. All done up in a party dress and taking a little gift, she arrived only to be told by the girl’s father, “No, you are not invited.” She pretended to her mother that all had been well, but that night she cried herself to sleep.
In another film, the 1996 How It Feels, Emin stands on a street corner and for 23 minutes tells the viewer in a detailed matter-of-fact way of her traumatic experience of an abortion when she was 21, and of the conflicting emotions associated with the event. Several of the later paintings refer back to this, blood oozing from between the thighs, and echoing some of Paula Rego’s late angry work. Emin pursues the subject in detail in the embroidered blanket The Last of the Gold (2002), an A to Z instruction panel of advice to women in similar circumstances.
The abortion was followed by an emotional crisis which forced Emin to stop painting in 1990. “The smell of the oil paints and the turps made me feel physically sick, and even after my termination, I couldn’t paint. It’s like I needed to punish myself by stopping the thing I loved doing the most.” An installation, Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (1996) is a large cuboid space into which visitors can look but not enter. It is in the form of the artist’s cluttered studio which Emin locked herself into for three weeks trying to work through her feelings of guilt towards the medium she had abandoned.
The second major calamity in Emin’s life was her 2020 diagnosis of an aggressive bladder cancer. She underwent radical surgery to remove several internal organs. Thankfully she appears to have fully recovered and lives with a stoma bag. Again, this is documented in detail. A display of dozens of close-up colour photographs leaves the viewer in no doubt about the pain and indignity she has suffered.
However much one might sympathise with the difficulties Emin has encountered, the self-absorption goes to worrying lengths. The viewer is faced with titles of works, or announcements within works, such as I Am the Last of My Kind, There is No More Me and You Made Me Feel Like Nothing. Not one piece in the show is about any subject other than herself.
We live in a confessional, egocentric age. A time when the President of the United States prefers to address the world through his own internet platform; an age when hordes of cinema goers take to social media to advertise how they sobbed through the last half-hour of Hamnet. Into this world of confessional self-exposure the art of Tracey Emin fits perfectly.
Of course, great art can grow from seeds of autobiography. In a Mahler symphony one might hear a bugle call, echoing the composer’s childhood in the vicinity of an army barracks, or cowbells reflecting his love of the Austrian Alps. Much of D. H. Lawrence’s life finds its way into the novels. But in these cases, because of the level of artistry involved, the personal transcends to the universal, the individual to the collective, and we better understand the human condition as a whole. Tracey Emin’s work, despite her searing honesty and good intentions, does not make this leap.
© Graham Buchan 2026.
By Graham Buchan • added recently on London Grip, art, exhibitions, installations, photography, tapestry • Tags: art, exhibitions, Graham Buchan, installations, photography, tapestry