Tracey Emin:'Being an artist is about making art, not money'

Tracey Emin has taken aim at money-obsessed male artists who endlessly churn out versions of the same work in order to make even more money and buy bigger houses.

Who could she mean?

Emin was addressing the Hay literary festival in Wales, where she spoke about happiness, her work, her legacy and politics.

She said she was growing as an artist, unlike some of her contemporaries.

“I know artists who make the same fucking work day in, day out,” she said. “They make it, they sell it, they make it, they sell it, they make another version, they sell it. They get a bigger house, they sell it. They get another house, they make some more work, they make more of the same work – that is what their fucking life is ... that is not being an artist. Being an artist is about making art, not about making money.”

She would not be drawn on who she meant. “It tends to happen much more with male artists. I’m not talking about Picasso.”

Only Emin can say whether she had her Young British Artists contemporary Damien Hirst in mind as she was speaking.

Certainly Hirst – whose property portfolio includes the Grade I-listed Gloucestershire stately home Toddington Manor and an 18-bedroom John Nash mansion house overlooking Regent’s Park in London – has never denied being interested in making money.



He once told the Guardian: “Money is so important because so many people haven’t got any. It’s the key, isn’t it? More important than languages, it’s the key to the world, it can save your life. People without money can die – you can’t afford an operation, you die.”

Emin is known for art in which she is the subject but it is not as simple as that, she told Hay.

“I don’t have a family life like other people do, all I have is my art. That is my obsession, not me.”

She is also known as a rare Tory-voting visual artist, having supported David Cameron’s government.

But Emin said she would not be voting Tory next month because of Brexit.

“I still don’t know why it happened,” she said. “I cried when that result came in. I was literally in tears and crying because I’m friendly and I don’t think you should fuck your neighbours – I think you should support them.”

Nor could she vote for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn because of his “arrogance” and attitude to Brexit; or the Liberal Democrats under Tim Farron because “I work so hard for gay rights ... I can’t vote for someone who believes gay sex is a sin.”

She will, Emin said, probably vote for the Women’s Equality party.

Emin is 54 and thinking hard about her legacy, which is important to her, she said. She is in the process of creating an archive that would be open to everyone after her death. “I’m in the process of moving studio so I’ll have a giant studio and hopefully that can become a museum of some kind. I’m thinking about the future.”

Emin has spent the last year on a “non-showing” sabbatical but working hard on her art, which is becoming more abstract, she said, adding that it is sexual work but more about the memory of sex and passion.


www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/may/28/tracey-emin-being-artist-about-making-art-not-money-hay-festival