Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin, CBE, RA is an English contemporary artist known for her autobiographical and confessional artwork. Emin produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and sewn appliqué. Once the "enfant terrible" of the Young British Artists in the 1980s, Tracey Emin is now a Royal Academician of the Royal Academy of Arts...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPop Artist
Date of Birth3 July 1963
artist best careful honest
I should be careful what I say here, but I don't think I'm visually the best artist in the world. I've got to be honest about this.
bronze figure good looked square wrote
In New York, working at the foundry, I was making these little figures. I desperately would like to make big figures, but I just can't do it; my hands don't do it. We were talking about making bronze plinths, and then we made one, a square one. I wrote on it, then I put a little figure on top, and it just looked really good. It worked.
means prices rarely secondary work
My work rarely comes up in secondary market, so it means that my prices stay low.
people
I'd like to think I inspire young people to be creative.
four moral three
With any story I write, I could actually write it from three or four different perspectives, which would end with a completely different moral at the end.
life matter sells ten work
One thing about an artist, it doesn't matter how much your work sells for in your life, it's going to sell for ten times more than that after you're dead, and that's what you have to protect.
against committee decided fit happened millions time within work
It's happened time and time again, but the committee has always decided against it-the work was too conservative or didn't fit within the budget; there are millions of different reasons.
until
I didn't have an exhibition anywhere until I was 30. My first exhibition was at 30, and then for my first show in America, I'm 50. It's kind of all right: I'm just a slow burner.
plateau women
Women, at 50, are on a plateau with their careers, but later they ascend.
children
When you don't have children you have to define and make your own purpose, and make your own reason for being here.
few fit good healthy
We have a really good life, we like it the way it is. If I keep fit and healthy and in shape, I do actually have a few good years.
ahead goes
When you're 20 or 30, looking ahead, you see these benchmarks for relationships, career, ambition, sexuality, and they went off into infinity. When you get to 50, you look at what's ahead of you, and there's an end. It goes into a nothingness, a void.
almost bit bronze sculptures time wholly
I've been making bronze sculptures for a long time. My sculptures are wholly unsuccessful and uncommercial. No one is even the remotest bit interested in them. So it's almost like my hobby.
I'm out of here, I'm better than all of you.