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
taught censorship one-thing
One thing that success has taught me is censorship
bit difficult macho society
The land's really beautiful, it's just that it's a bit of a macho society to say the least and it's very difficult to get things done.
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.
people
Some people use just one condom, right? But we use tons.
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.
They look at someone like me, and I just really get up their nose. I really wind them up.
I've got to start using my brain more - I've got to be more ethereal and more enlightened.
A man doesn't know what it's like to be a woman; it's that simple.
good selfish small tiny
I'd make a good friend, not mother. I'm too selfish. I think a lot of mothers are selfish and they end up having children, but I don't want to put some small tiny person through that.
ageing bother care suddenly supposed worry
I know I'm supposed to say ageing doesn't bother me, then suddenly you're like, 'Yeah, I care about it, I really worry about it. I'm getting old. I'm old!'
love realise totally
There's different kinds of love, and I'd never experienced that kind of totally platonic love. All the love I've experienced has always been a kind of deal, and now, as I get older, I realise that there's this other love out there.
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.