Social history versus art could well be the title of the Tate Modern exhibition. Tracy Emin A Second Life retrospective. Thirty years ago, her installation “My Bed” propelled her to tabloid fame and then gradually to national treasure, while retaining her reputation as a “sexually aggressive and cursing provocateur.”
Her initial foray into conceptual art was initially taken as promiscuous boasting, but was ultimately seen as a self-portrait of depression, following childhood abandonment, abuse, rape at age 13, and suicidal thoughts after a recent breakup.
Her work has engaged with women’s home narrative traditions, from the exploitation of her abortion to other traumas. “She broke taboos about women’s bodies, desires, abuse, menstruation and pregnancy.”
One critic wrote: “The spectacle is one prolonged howl of agony.” Another “Emin’s recent monumental paintings resemble an inner hell.”
“I could have loved my innocence” (2007)
“Just Like Nothing” (2009) (with the inscription “You made me feel like nothing”)
“Rape”, 2018
“You heard me scream”, 2022.
Emin was treated for cancer in 2020 by removing many internal organs and now uses a stoma bag.
‘Emin tells his life as it is with a voice that is necessarily vehement, intimidating and narcissistic. This is not a criticism: autobiographical art, especially survivor tales, depends on an indomitable sense of self.”
“Art is for feeling, not for looking,” he insists.
Born on July 3, 1963 at 6:50 a.m. London, to a single mother of traveling Roma descent and a Turkish Cypriot father who had another family. She left school at 13, was raped at 13, then suffered two traumatic abortions and went through a suicidal phase.
she is a 12th creative house Sun Cancer trine to 4th house Neptune in Scorpio sextile (Uranus) Pluto Mars in Virgo: He dreamed of a happy home and ended up with the ruthless and cruel Mars Pluto, who would undoubtedly give him a life or death determination. But what is undoubtedly its saving grace is an outspoken and decidedly optimistic Jupiter in Aries in his 10th.th at the focal point of a yod conjunct Mars sextile and Neptune. A Jupiter at the vertex would give him the confidence to promote himself, sometimes with a touch too vigorous, but as a counterbalance to his problems it would be a definite advantage. His Saturn on the cusp of his 8.th It is square to an intense Scorpio Moon and trine Venus Mercury in Gemini, so the emotional rejection would be profound. His Saturn is conjunct the centaur asteroid Chariklo, which conveys the story of eternal suffering. Algol, the destructive Fixed star, is in its 10thth.
I would have to confess that I have problems with conceptual art, Joseph Beuys, etc., and I can’t understand Emin’s work at all. The problem is not darkness and unhappiness, it just doesn’t feel like art. I understand Goya’s dark paintings. This not so much.
