Tracey Emin the artist

Cubism - hmm well yeah, i apprecaite it.. i just wrote a massive essay where i had to spend a long time researching it. I appreciate it because i can see it was a big step for art, i appreciate it because it led to a new way in thinking. So i can see the point in it. Arguably Tracy Emin is doing this - new thinking but.. personally i can't stand it. Theres no real effort involved. However, not all modern art do i dislike, I am generally talking of artist much like Tracy Emin, that whole contempory installation thing. Some bits i like and some i don't. Particulally Tracy Emin.

 

i read an article by her recently about how she wants her death to be her final peice of "art", and i must be honest but it was a pile of pretentious crap.

i dont like her stuff, i dont like "modern" art, the art that says that a messy bed, or a light bulb that switches on and off has meaning that should be valued and looked at in galleries, i dont like instilations either, and to be honest i'd go as far as to say that they were made by "artists" that are otherwise incapable of expressing their opinions. And people like tracy emin obviously do have valuble opinions, its just that their way of expressing them isnt exactly the best form, and i cant except that it is art.

If a messy bed is art, then shit on me, i've been creating art every morning since i was born.....

 

I must say I am slightly surprised at the somewhat "Daily Mail" attitudes towards modern art expressed on this thread...

I am certainly no fan of Tracey Emin, but conceptual art certainly has its place. The point of it is the idea, not the execution... some pieces of conceptual art make me think uniquely new and different ideas and as such have great intellectual and cultural value to me.

 

Hey, that's fine with me! As long as it happens soon...... :X

 

I'm sorry i don't read the daily mail.. i make me own mind up. If my opinion is unsatisfactory i don't care nowerdays.. its about time people said what they thought about things instead of keeping it to themselves. I dislike her work, not all modern art. Some of it. Yeah its new, yeah but there are some fantastic artists out there, whom are far more talanted then Emins and they go without being recognised...! All i am saying its easy to put some blocks in a room, oor ruffle up a bed. But is it easy to paint a beautifully intricute mural? Is it easy say you appreciate modern art and why you do so, but for me.. and this is me only i don't wish to make anyone feel that what i am saying is the "word". For me, it is far more enjoyable to go to see someones work, to look and meet that person and feel connected with it and apprecaite how much life went into it, how much effort. I'd rather see something beautiful hand carved or hand painted... something that the artist has given its own life to.

 

This is completely irrelevant to the discussion of conceptual art. Execution and craftsmanship don't even come into it ... what we are talking about is a different mode of thinking about what precisely art means.

Is it easy to mess up a bed? Sure it is.

Is it easy to think new thoughts? Is it easy to make other people think new thoughts? It certainly is not... that is a rare talent. There is a great deal of conceptual art which is pretentious bollocks, certainly. But I also think it is important to open your mind enough to always be on the lookout for innovation ... and the notion that an idea can be art was a glorious revelation to me. It opened my mind to new ideas about what art itself is. Carl Andre's Equivalents for me are an example of this. Sometimes, just sometimes ... ideas are beautiful. They can be just as beautiful as a well painted mural, but - and incredibly importantly - in a wholly different way.

 

I am saying i do apprecaite some conseptual/modern art and some i don't. It's not that i don't have an open mind, i am always looking out for something new. Its is just perhapes that generally its not my sort of thing.. and well when you don't like something you don't like it you like something else. Same as everything else, some people don't like bananas and some people do. It's not the end of the world and its not that they aren't open minded, they may have tried to like bananas after all. It just doesn't suit them. Like i consider all art and personally i know what i do and i don't like, whats so wrong with that... is what i fail to understand. I do appreacite new thought, new idea and it has come to my attention deffinatly that it is probably the new way of thinking. But, still do i HAVE to like it? - no i don't - so maybe you like it and maybe i am not sure but it feels your saying anyone who doesn't like it, doesn't "get it" and there fore is a lesser person for not liking it. Which is balls, i am sure theres some part of art you dislike, but thats your preference is it not? Yeah it opens you mind and makes you feel certain ways, but the point of that art aswell perhapes is to prevoke any sort of responce good or bad. Mine is more bad than good and mayeb you can stand tall and say, well then your effected by it. Yeah i am, i don't like it. But explain to me why i can't dislike it.. because that is what your seeming to say...?

 

I don't think Mr Met was trying to say that you don't have the right to dislike it. I think he was responding to your apparent objection to its artistic validity - an objection with which I, personally, have much sympathy.

I believe one of the problems lies in the distinction between artists and non-artists. For example, if one person is able to create a messy bed and refer to it as 'art', why should any other person not be able to do the same? By this definition, we should all be artists. Unfortunately, instead of having the positive effect of liberating art and making creative expression accessible to the masses, conceptual art has rather had the effect of creating pseudo-intellectual cliques convinced of their own unique worth. To make matters worse, the nature of conceptual art is such that it enables people with no particular talent to masquerade as artists at the highest ranks of British culture. And nobody seems to notice that the emperor wears no clothes.

I would argue that firstly, anyone who is able to express an idea through a visually striking creation is an artist. Secondly, I suggest that many modern artists have no real talent beyond a natural aptitude for marketing. The real difficulty is that the nature of installation art makes it almost impossible to distinguish between art and fraud, since the only differentiator is the idea, who can tell whether a messy bed is art or bullshit? Again, the emperor wears no clothes.

 

I think its a difficult thing to judge and modern conceptual art is gonna mean different things to different people, Is it genuine art or not? who the hell knows! I can see both sides of the argument though.

Personally, I'd rather a Van Gogh or a Camille Martin to most of this new stuff anyday of the week.

 

im not fond of her work really but i admire her persistance to live her dream,she didnt have a good start in life but she has made something for herself!

 

I agree with that, i think i thought about it like that before in regards to "the emperor's new clothes" i think a lot of people cannot distinguish between fraudsters and real artist trying to express something. I agree that a lot of these consteptual artists aswell lack any other way to express themselevs creatively. I also think that these sort of people whom in one way are freeing art but also as you say letting any clever so and so, with a "natural aptitdue for marketing" make money and look like some sort of genious.

Anyone see that Simpson episode when Homer accidently made something that art critics deemed marvalous and creative and wonderful and ingenious... its like that sometimes nowerdays... art is becoming completely misled - anything, can be a godly creation so to speak, completely lost i don't think many people know what it is any more. But maybe thats the beauty, the freedom in it?

I can see why you apprecaite it, the ideas behind the work the reasons its done. Grown i suppose from Dadism.. ANTI art... i think thats where it all began. The idea of consteptual art deffinatly grew from that. I can see where its come from and i can see why it benifits art - as it frees art up.
But, let it be known i value other types of art a hell of a lot more.
I simply don't like very much of it and i feel art is becoming in this new age a very abscent minded, shallow and self-absorbed money making game!
(Not all of it, but a lot of it!)

(waits to get a slap in the face for such a statement)

 

Yeah, Dok is right, I was simply objecting to the blanket dismissals of all conceptual and installation art. These took the form of the arse-achingly unoriginal "that's not art, that's just a pile of bricks, that is." This is the epitome of the "Daily Mail attitude" that I dislike so much, wherein anything which does not fit into established patterns and norms is automatically rejected. If you think like that, how will you ever discover anything new? Who are we to say what is and isn't art? These ideas are not and should not be unassailable, and it always takes people who are prepared to break down walls and boundaries to move things forwards.

As with anything, there are a few true innovators and a hell of a lot of mediocre copyists, and it's often the copyists who achieve the fame and wealth. But a healthy dislike of Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin shouldn't be used to dismiss the possibility of there being good examples of conceptual or installation art. That's far too easy to do... it's simply intellectual laziness.

 

How can you say that, how can you seriously say that!
"If you think like that, how will you ever discover anything new?"
That is completely rediculous, as i don't dismiss all modern art forums only some particular artists. I didn't automatically reject it either, maybe some people do but i approach Tracy Emins and any other artist who is doing something different open mindly and through thorough thought about it - yes i do actually think about these things and what i think about it - or i wouldn't bother to continue this. It seems to me your saying if you don't like every piece new art than you can't carry on with a creative life. Which seems obsurd to me. I am not some uninformed little kid, i do do art, i do research artists, i am am informed about what i talk about and i do think about my responces.

AND as for..

"dislike of Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin shouldn't be used to dismiss the possibility of there being good examples of conceptual or installation art. That's far too easy to do... it's simply intellectual laziness."

Intellectual laziness, if i wanted to be intellectually lazy why would i bother to have this debate in the first place and express my opinion.. another thing.. are you reading what i am writing at all? I do like some conceptual/installation art not all of it. Pay attention i am not completely knocking the whole thing, just some of it and thats what you fail to see. I am not saying right, all modern art is crap.. am i? I am saying some of it i dislike and i have made that descision with a lot of thought. So please don't make my opinion out to be some uneducated statement, because i feel it is far from that.

 

Calm down dear ... yes I had noticed you have since attenuated and qualified your position... Please don't take it so personally.

The posts which made me contribute originally was this one of yours:

"Arguably Tracy Emin is doing this - new thinking but.. personally i can't stand it. Theres no real effort involved. However, not all modern art do i dislike, I am generally talking of artist much like Tracy Emin, that whole contempory installation thing."

And this one of Joel's:

"i dont like her stuff, i dont like "modern" art, the art that says that a messy bed, or a light bulb that switches on and off has meaning that should be valued and looked at in galleries, i dont like instilations either, and to be honest i'd go as far as to say that they were made by "artists" that are otherwise incapable of expressing their opinions."

 

Its just, grr i can't help but feel that because some people make uneducated statements about art, that mine must be also. Which it is not, i did take it personally and i couldn't help it. I felt you assumed that i had made a quick negative judgement, because it was the "cool" thing to do.. which it was not. I don't do things like that, i rarely speak up in big debates beecause i feel out of my depth an to uninformed ... and writing is my worst form of expressing myself because i can't explain myself as well!
But i do reolise i came acorss quite scary - which i am not hehe..just, feel people can't apprecaite negative comments because your automatically seen as just arguing for the sake of it or something... i don't know everything, but i do know somethings. Do you still love me Showmet even though i got mean sounding *blush*?

 

That's the ticket. Flirt your way out of trouble. Never fails

 

Best way with Jon... that or flash him some flesh

 

Yes... yes I think more people should do that...

Dandy I wasn't accusing you of having the attitude I described, just really explaining why I dislike the tendency some people have to dismiss conceptual art without thinking about it. And perhaps warning against falling into the trap of tarring all contemporary artists with the same brush (boom boom).

I know from our previous discussions that you are anything but ignorant about art

 

i like tracey emin. i admit, i usedta feel the same as alot of you about her and her work, however i saw the bed which was only one piece of a room full of pieces at the turner prize when i was doing a-level. alot of her work was desperately written scrawled child like pain. i felt for her, i pitied her, i empathised with her. it all made sense!

you could take this to the level of what is art? is art just a beautiful painting, or a cleverly constructed and composed technical drawing, a sculpture with the finest crafted detail, or a connection between artist and viewer, a sharing of the soul, of its pain and love.

tracey emin is an alcoholic, she has been raped and has endured a lot of shit and difficulty in her life. she is just another person like you or me, dealing with her shit in a way she knows how. in school during a-level we watched a documentary on her and afterwards i started dealing with my shit in scribbly left hand written words on ripped messy lined exercise book paper....childlike drawings to expose the childlike vunerability and pain. because our bodies may grow up but the person inside doesnt change. the person inside is forever young, our 'inner child'. the scrawled pieces of paper i wrote mean something to me, they may mean something to you or you may just say - that is not art!

in my first year at uni, we had a task to choreograph a piece based on or danced as a character of our choice. i did mine as tracey emin. it was very angry, very vunerable. the dance was very fast and jagged, desperate and ended in me sitting hugging my knees rocking backwards and forwards in my own little world before hiding face down on my (vaguely reenacted) bed.

on the shes sexy thing tho, nah she aint. i just have respect for her and her work.

 

Which is grand. But her 'art' is still shite. Don't get me wrong - I believe she has every right to make it and every right to display it and every right to call it art. But it doesn't have any inherent merit beyond what you or I might create if we were 'dealing with our shit' artistically. It also isn't very striking, IMHO. And it certainly doesn't belong in the Tate.