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The Art of Tracey Emin edited by Mandy Merck, Chris Townsend Thames Hudson, 2002
Academic criticism aims to state the obvious in the lengthiest, most complicated way possible-the more illegible to the uneducated, the better. Reading this kind of writing gives undergraduates the impression that they're reading a difficult, sophisticated text, while preparing them to comprehend (or even formulate their own) genuinely complex ideas. At its most uninspired, academic criticism stretches to bring in larger social issues that may or may not have anything to do with the original subject, often obscuring it to the point of forgetting...
To date, hardly any discourse (a word I learned at university) surrounding Tracey Emin, possibly the most famous living British artist, has focused on her work. This is due not only to its sensational autobiographical nature, so easily digestible by the mainstream media that elevated her to stardom, but to the anti-intellectualism that proliferated throughout the '90s and has arguably continued until recently. To wit: the definitive publication on the work of Tracey Emin contained an essay that opened with "Tracey Emin has big tits and comes from Margate."
The contributors to The Art of Tracey Emin agree that something intelligent must be said about their subject, and they have the credentials to say it. The goal being to explain her and her work (which, most of the contributors agree, are one and the same) to an enlightened audience. Among other essays, we get an analysis of what one academic critic calls Emin's "bad-sex aesthetics." We're also treated to an obligatory (because Emin's a woman artist who fucks a lot) essay on her connection to (and "radical" permutations of) feminist art. Even an elucidation of "pop cultural strategies in Tracey Emin's videos" (because this subject truly requires the commentary of an academic specialist). The editors also dared to include one interesting essay by Renee Vara on the relationship of Emin's work to Edvard Munch's.
While their intentions are good, these authors fail more often than they succeed in grasping Emin's work: "In many of these pieces, the work seems spontaneous, like a home video, when it is, of course, and cannot be other than, a meditated and 'made' work of art" (!!!). This statement is illustrative of the author's inability to understand the psychology of the artist, in its presumption that spontaneity could never be considered a genuine artistic mode. Even my deaf-mute mentally retarded god-sister can locate the spirit of randomness that animates most, if not all of Emin's work.
Ultimately, the interview with the artist included at the end reveals more truth than the previous 194 pages: Tracey Emin is a dyslexic, nearly illiterate pysco (sic) slut who cunningly put her pain on display to attain fame and notoriety in a culture that equates suffering with authenticity. Those who wish to view the results of this suffering will have to travel to London to view the newly opened contents of the Charles Saatchi collection; those who wish to familiarize themselves with some of the worst academic tendencies of the last two decades need only read the Art of Tracey Emin.
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