Perhaps one way to demystify Emin’s work is to consider the theory Clive Bell presents in the essay Aesthetic Hypothesis.  According to Bell, all art must have the ability to evoke aesthetic emotion.  A work of art must take the unassuming viewer into the beating heart of its world—a world that encapsulates more than pedestrian emotion, impulse, and imagination.   Emin’s work unquestionably evokes emotion, but how is her work different from everyday aesthetic stimulants? Is the blatant sexuality of her work artistic?  Does her work have the ability to transform itself into something that represents the slippery plate tectonics of the human mind?

Helter Fucking Skelter points a critical finger at the viewer, transferring the impulsive, angry emotion of the artist. Again, the obvious tenets of Bell’s theory of significant form--harmony of lines, colors, black and white that move aesthetically – are not present in this work. So it must be something else that Emin wants us to see. The rough statements and concepts, such as “TOTAL PARANOIA” certainly distinguish the work from ordinary objects, but of what worth? Art has the capacity to say anything as long as the integrity of the work of art is maintained. Does Tracy Emin’s quilt uphold the integrity of significant form, vindicating the outrageous impulses it presents, or is she merely an exhibitionist, shocking for the sake of shocking? Though the quilt succeeds in representing the duality of women in society by juxtaposing the domesticity of quilt making with the fury of her words, how is this more than a neo-feminist statement? Looking to the juxtaposition of the quilt’s feminine colors against the aggressive statements (which may be read as masculine) forces the viewer to confront Emin's ideologies, which seem to be getting at the artistic sensibility of her work. Yet Tracy Emin's work is not an object of emotion.  It goes beyond visual representation into literal sensation, collapsing the distance between art and life. Emin's life is her art.

Other pieces on display included finely drawn line etchings of women with their crotches splayed and Emin’s adolescent diary mounted behind glass. These works brought me to further examine the value of Emin’s work--at times the pieces seemed little more than objects displaying her inherent self-indulgence. For a moment, I felt that Emin’s collection should be called “I-am-a-woman-with-a-vagina-and-bodily-fluids” art. 

Shortly after my encounter with Emin at the Tate, I had the opportunity to view Emin’s My Bed at London’s Saatchi Gallery. Panty hose, used condoms, KY Jelly, and empty vodka bottles were strewn alongside the stained sheets of Emin’s gallery bed. To make the scene even more pitiable, a noose hung above the decadent piece, alluding to the hopelessness the objects around the bed insinuated. Emin’s My Bed creates a contrived sensation of bleakness that fails to distinguish her own self-pity from imaginative emotion. Again, we return to the idea that Emin’s life is her art. My Bed displays the anguish and disgust of the human condition and succeeds in humanizing Emin.  Yet without “celebrity status,” Emin would have no public to vindicate her melodrama. My Bed begs the viewer to accept Tracy Emin “the celebrity” as a faulted human being.

  
My Bed, Tracy Emin.