Tracey Emin’s current retrospective at the Hayward Gallery on the Southbank is the first major survey of her work for a London audience. Allowing one the all-too-rare opportunity to stand back and view her produce holistically, it affirms that she is the quintessence of the postmodern artist. Why? Because at its core is not her artistic skill but, rather, herself.
These pieces are a visual record of a lifetime of self-induced introspection and personal cross-examination. She lays bare her most extreme moments of psychological and emotional anguish, to the extent that her navigation of the deep traumas in her life, such as the brutal sexual experiences of her early teenage years and her abortion, are played out before us. It isn’t really about art at all. It’s about her, about the experiences which have formed her mind and emotional state. The title, ‘Love Is What You Want’, suggests a conclusion drawn from long emotional hardship. Ironically, then, there is no empathy here, except for those individuals who have helped shape her own life, particularly her father. Attempts at universalising her feelings are half-hearted and a little trite.
Our encounter in the gallery is unnervingly intimate. She shows us bloodied hospital paraphernalia and how she masturbates in the bath. We see her fingerprints in the smudge marks on her drawings. Very private moments are made very public. This lack of formality is one of the most striking aspects of this exhibition- and the Hayward is in many ways quite inappropriate for showing this material. The text-covered quilts feel like they should be in a playroom, which would also be far more practical as one needs to read them to get a sense of their intended meaning. It would all be more comfortable away from these cavernous spaces, perhaps in the closeness of her house. This would, indeed, satisfy her objective far more closely. Such an effort is made to make us feel in her company through videos and letters that relocation to the place where she lives would surely be the natural progression.
One feels, however, that this journey of emotional discovery dominates to the deprecation of Emin’s sublime technical skill. She is a wonderful draughtswoman, her drawings inducing great pathos in their depiction of those low or challenging moments in her life. Sad Shower in New York shows what we presume to be her, standing under the falling water with a tormented expression, a second torso transposed on the first, giving the effect of a corpse, or a carcass, hanging from the shower head as if from a butcher’s hook. The tapestries, done with black thread on a white background, are in the same form as the sketches, yet, because of their cleaner and more disjointed lines and the more complex skill involved, feel detached from her and, as such, are rare moments of formality. More impressive still are the blown-glass neons, some giving messages in her handwriting, others images in the style of her sketches.
For all her best work, though, we have to tackle the swathes of ‘low’ art. Informality, designed to challenge, often comes across as pure laziness. The videos and memorabilia contribute in that they give us a more rounded sense of the artist, but when they are put up on a pantheon and forced on our attention, they seem to be beneath her, expressing a thought or an emotion by the easy path. The great skill is in translating these feelings in ways that are more technically difficult, and it is here that Emin is at her most impressive.
Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London until the 29th of August
