Strangeland - Tracey Emin

 STRANGELAND - TRACEY EMIN

I like Tracey Emin. There, I've said it. There is a proviso, however, in that I'm not a big fan of her art, particularly her installations. It's a delicate balance - a juggling act - but I manage it in the same way that I like Francis Bacon whilst not being a big fan of his art - or his studio. Especially his studio. I remember there being an exhibition of Tracey Emin's artwork in Amsterdam once, and on the outside of the Van Gogh Museum a gigantic banner advertising the show had been hung and I remember stopping to look at it and thinking that's an impressive achievement for an artist to have their name outside the Van Gogh Museum like that. Up there if not better than being nominated for the Turner Prize? The thing was, I didn't feel compelled to go in there and to actually view the show. I did at a later date but for the meantime the kudos and the sheer achievement was enough, which all served to enforce the idea that Tracey Emin's greatest work of art is not her tent with the names sown onto it or her unmade bed or her drawings. No, Tracey Emin's greatest work of art is herself.

Strangeland is a collection of Emin's memoirs and recollections written in a painfully forthright, often shockingly confessional but more than likely exaggerated manner, reminiscent of the confessional writings of Billy Childish. And that didn't take very long did it - to bring Billy Childish's name into the proceedings? But then it's almost unavoidable, really. Billy Childish is like the conscience that haunts Emin's art. The pure and unsullied Ying to her 'sold to the highest bidder' Yang. The question of whose art is the better doesn't come into it, however, and neither does commerciality or even originality. If anything, it's more to do with marketing because without any doubt more people know who Tracey Emin is and know some of her art than those who know of Billy Childish. It's just how the world works. The art world especially.

There's some pretty shocking stuff in Strangeland. Things that a reviewer once said that he wished someone who loved Emin had advised her not to publish. But publish she did and now here it all is in book form for the whole world to see. And for whose benefit? Well, for Emin's I presume because whilst it's good to have such candid and at times such brutal honesty displayed there's very little for the reader to actually gain from it, particularly when it comes to her anecdotes in regard to underage sex and abuse.

Strangeland is another addition to Tracey Emin's canon. Another string to her bow. Another medium to channel her art through - that art being herself, of course. Tracey Emin is her own muse, her own subject, and her own creation. Her grand finale, even. The point being that whether it's good or bad art is neither here nor there. That's not the question. That isn't what Emin's art is about.

Likewise, the question as to whether Strangeland is a good book or not is also neither here nor there. It can be read in the same way you would any other book, of course, but it shouldn't really be critiqued in the same way. That's not to say it's beyond criticism, it's just that the ingenuity of Tracey Emin is in the way she's smashed through a kind of fourth art wall in the same way, dare I say, as Picasso did with his Cubism. Purists might scoff but it's true and it doesn't mean you necessarily need to like Emin's art to recognise this.

John Serpico