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Emin will be representing Britain in the Venice Biennale this year, which is perhaps the highest accolade that can go to a British artist (far bigger than, say, the Turner Prize).
Me, I remain pretty unconvinced by her work. Not in the 'is it art?' sense (if she claims it is, it is), but in the sense that it is so dependent on our continued fascination with her. Her autobiographical approach worked very well in the early works (the tent, for example, and her shop project with the far better Sarah Lucas), but there is a law of diminishing returns here that's similar to that we encounter with some musicians. The more famous they get (and Emin, still unusually for an artist, in genuinely famous), and the further they get from the circumstances that informed their early practice, the less interesting and convincing their continued thematic engagement with those circumstances becomes.
It's worth noting that Emin - unlike Hirst, Lucas, Martin Creed, Douglas Gordon, Liam Gillick etc - is a British artist who's not hugely acclaimed outside Britain. Perhaps there's a strain of provincialism in her work, or perhaps there are other, better artists on the international stage who are seen to be covering some of the same territory more effectively (Erik Van Lieshout, for example). Will be interesting to see if Venice impacts on this. |
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