Replaying the Old Stereotypes into an Artistic Role: the case of Tracey Emin

摘要

Tracey Emin is perhaps the best-known contemporary female artist in Great Britain today. In recent years, she has been listed as one of the most important people in the art world before many established male artists. However, she has also featured on the list of the Worst Britons. Emin combines her unusual public status with notoriety. Emin's public image is considered here and its construction in relation to a generation of young British artists that emerged in the booming years of reality television and tabloid culture in the late 1980s and the 1990s. Emin's artistic persona is situated in the context of art history and her position in relation to art icons such as Mary Kelly, the feminist artist, and Andy Warhol, the pop artist who mastered the art of the public self. However, the article also questions this emphasis on Emin's persona rather than considering her artistic strategy and self-construction. Is a true understanding of Emin's persona necessary, desirable, or even possible?