Bedtime?

The opening of Tracey Emin’s twenty year retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art this year will force the nostalgic to cast their minds back to the world in which she began. Emin’s first solo exhibition, My Major Retrospective, opened at the White Cube Gallery in 1993, launching Emin and her work as icons of an art market reeling from the credit crunch of the early nineties. A barely post-Thatcherite Britain had been forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, Charles Saatchi had had to sell off most of his blue-chip US and European collection and the Turner Prize was closed for the year of 1989 due to lack of funding. Britain was forced to turn to home-grown talent. The works of artists such as Emin, Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread were new, exciting and – crucially – cheap.

Charged with democratic ideals, the Young British Artists (YBAs) sought to dissolve the elitist monopoly that had previously controlled contemporary art. The result was ‘accessible’ art – high on shock factor and low on visible skill. It was no coincidence that Saatchi, the chief-dealer of YBA work, had started in advertising: by the mid-nineties, mass media and mass culture were driving the revitalisation of the art-world.

Emin was the unquestionable leader of the pack. With works such as “My Bed”, an unmade bed scattered with condoms, cigarettes and umpteen bodily fluids totting up sale prices of £150,000, it was clear that the confessional was in vogue, and Emin had a lot to confess. The artist is perhaps more famous for her abortions, rapes, miscarriages and suicide attempts than for the actual works she produces. The retrospective that The National Gallery is gearing up to host this summer offers the iconic works of this confessional mode. Including souvenirs gathered from her uncle before he died and tapestry work that explores the psychological effects of her failed pregnancies, this exhibition is testament to Emin’s outstanding skill in the commoditization of tragedy. Featuring “My Bed”, “You forgot to kiss my Soul” and “Hotel International”, the retrospective will chart the development of Emin’s key themes of sex, pregnancy and Margate across her twenty year career.

The concern, however, is the effect that time will have had on these once jaw-droppingly shocking works. The National Gallery has erred on the side of caution with a ‘sixteen years and over’ age limit on the show, but one can’t help but feel that a teenager of 2008 might be yawning his way through these ‘show-stoppers’, eager to return home to much racier day-time TV. The YBAs of the nineties sanctioned their own sell-by-date by producing work that was defined by its relevance to the contemporary moment; work that arguably had no inherent value, but was successful due to its being so taboo. Emin’s retrospective will question whether these taboos still hold. Furthermore, this retrospective will explore Emin’s personal position in relation to the art world of The Naughties. Ideologically speaking, her work identifies with a staunchly anti-establishment position. Famous for appearing drunk on TV and frequently sticking two fingers up to art-world elitism, a twenty year retrospective in Scotland’s National Gallery is an awfully long way from grotty Hoxton warehouses. Perhaps this exhibition seems a little hypocritical, or maybe it is indicative of an ageing rebel ready to relax into mainstream notoriety.

The image of the ageing rebel is one that may haunt this show. Emin, famous for her A-list openings, is bringing the likes of Elton John, George Michael and Jerry Hall out of the woodwork for this retrospective. Additionally, little of her work seems to address contemporary issues; even the most recent work on show, “It’s not the way I want to die”, recreates a section of Margate’s fairground rollercoaster – an image that ill-suits the modern Emin, the biennale-hopping, multi-millionairess she has become.
However, Emin’s failure to provide the 'previously unseen' impact of her previous shows may be the most contemporary statement of all. Perhaps this retrospective tracks the relative stages of ‘shock factor’ over two decades and decides that now is the time to stop pushing the envelope; perhaps Emin, in resigning herself to the absence of newness, is offering her newest confession of all.
Whether you decide that Emin is ‘on it’ or ‘past it’, this exhibition has to be seen as pivotal in its timing. The inability of the National Gallery to secure a major sponsor for this monumental artistic event is hauntingly familiar. Just as the Turner Prize’s sponsor failed in 1989, we are twenty years on and creeping towards another recession – yet again the future of the art market is in the balance. Emin’s work is sandwiched between recessions; it offers high-priced narcissism and wholesale tragedy that stand in rebellion against conservatism, a rebellion that seems to be weakening. Britain is changing; the culmination of Emin’s career is as representative of this transformation as its beginning was. Go and see it.