[MD] Tracey Emins take on what is Art

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi Lu,

Suggest you ask "the artists representatives".
Sounds like THEY let the artist down - and by having "representatives"
I'd say the artist let themsleves down too - so we'll never know in
this urban-myth-based-on-a-fact-like example.

Always difficult to recognize art when you can't see (hear / feel) the
craft / skill directly in the result - and with a lot of Tracy Emin's
work - the one's that make the scandalous (marketing) headlines -
that's almost non-existent, so no-one should take anyone's word for
it.

Having seen collections of her work - more than just the headline
pieces - I'd say she does produce crafted and imaginative art - a
mixture - pictures / sculptures / installations / unclassifiable,
representative and abstract. And I'm just a tourist at Tate Modern -
no expert.

Picture hanging on a wall - no context or history ?
What you see is what you get, you like it or you don't, you think it's
art or you don't - if it's a joke, it might be a good one, so laugh ?
So back to Tracy Emins - if you came across her unmade bed placed in
front of you as "art" - you might at least ask yourself

"What the **** ?" and if you were curious and paused to look at it for
even a few moments asking yourself "So, why is this a piece of art
then ?"

I think she'd say "mission accomplished" and move on to her next project.
Ian

On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 9:58 PM, Louise Pryor<bypryordesign at gmail.com> wrote:
> John mentioned in another post that my dad used to run a colour separations
> business in the Bay Area. He told us a story last weekend about a time when
> they were doing colour seps of some famous artist. His work was crayon on
> long sheets of newsprint. Long slashes of color - some of the sheets of
> paper were 20 feet long, and they had them rolled up and laying on tables,
> waiting to be scanned on the huge scanners. The plant manager came in one
> day and freaked out because these things were apparently worth hundreds of
> thousands of $$ - they had 20 or so to scan, and they had to lock them up in
> the safe. One of the jokers working there started tearing off long sheets of
> newsprint of his own, slashing them with crayon, then he copied the
> signature and added them to the stash in the safe. When the artists
> representatives came to pick up his originals they were confused by how many
> there were. But just shrugged and took them all.
>
> So - how do you tell if that is a work of art on your wall, or just a joke?
>
> Lu
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