Tag: studio
CANDY PERFUME GIRL
Jacket by Michael Kors Collection | Earrings by G.Sherman Jewels | Feather Collar by BINCbodyBaubles
Fragrance: LOST CHERRY by Tom Ford
Photography: Katie Borrazzo (@katieborrazzo) | Model: Clare Crawford at IMG Models (@clareacrawford) | Styling: Kingsley Osuji (@kingsley_nyc) | Hair: Erin Taylor (@erintaylorhair) using Wella Stay Firm + Wella Stay Essentiel | Makeup: Megan Kelly (@megankellybeauty) using Mehron | Set Design: Karen DeMaio Weber (@kwyoyo) | Set Assistant: Jana Bergstedt (@janadoesthings)
Dress by Kalmanovich | Earrings by Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Surprise | Socks Stylist's Own | Shoes by Erdem
Dress by Alena Akhmadullina | Earrings by Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Surprise
Jacket and Shirt by Gucci | Earrings and Ring by Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Surprise | Leggings by Alena Akhmadullina | Shoes by Clergerie Paris
Dress by Alena Akhmadullina | Earrings by Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Surprise | Shoes by Marc Jacobs
Dresses, Earrings, Ring, and Shoes by Versace | Socks Stylist's Own
Jacket and Dress by Tom Ford | Earrings by Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Surprise
Dress by Erdem | Pink Cotton (worn as bow) by Erdem | Earrings by Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Surprise | Bracelet by Marc Jacobs
Top, Bow Collar, Bracelet, Bow Belt, Pants, Socks, Shoes by Marc Jacobs | Earrings by Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Surprise
Dress by Kalmanovich | Earrings by Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Surprise
Dress and Pink Cotton (worn as bow) by Erdem | Earrings by Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Surprise | Bracelet by Marc Jacobs | Socks and Shoes by Erdem
Posted in Fashion, Web ExclusiveTagged BEAUTY, clare crawford, editorial, erdem, exclusive, fashion, fashion photography, img models, Jewelry, katie borrazzo, kingsley osuji, luxury, marc jacobs, michael kors, model, new york, new york city, studio, style, tom ford, trends, versace, web exclusive, womens fashionLeave a Comment on CANDY PERFUME GIRL
Photography: Dennis Tejero (@dennistejero) | Model: Ting Yan at Silent Models (@xitingyan2387) | Styling: Marti Arcucci (@martiarcucci) | Hair: Takashi Yusa (@takashiyusa) | Makeup: Michael Chua (@michaelchuabeauty) | Casting: Eric Cano (@cano_castings) | Set Producer: Jess Zuluaga (@jesszuluagaO) | Photo Assistants: Nathan Sweet and Bryant Lopez
Dress by Alena Akhmadullina, Earrings by Laruicci, Vintage Ring
Dress by Alena Akhmadullina, Vintage Pants, Earrings by Laruicci, Vintage Ring, Boots by Lena Erziak
Dress by Georgine, Coat by Victoria Hayes, Boots by Lena Erziak
Vintage Sequin Top, Vintage Levi's Jeans, Shoes by Lena Erziak
Suit by CHAE, Turtleneck by Victoria Hayes, Vintage Shoes by Manolo Blahnik
Vintage Top, Earrings by Laruicci
Dress by Kalmanovich, Stockings by Spanx
Blouse by Georgine, Pants by Victoria Hayes, Vintage Shoes by Manolo Blahnik
Dress by Victoria Hayes, Vintage Sheer Shirt, Vintage Levi's Jeans, Vintage Shoes by Manolo Blahnik, Rings by Ralph Masri
Dress by DELACRUZ, Shoes by Lena Erziak, Stockings by Spanx
Posted in Fashion, Web ExclusiveTagged art, asian, asian model, BEAUTY, celebration, china, chinese new year, editorial, exclusive, fashion, fashion photography, lunar new year, model, new york, photography, studio, trends, web exclusiveLeave a Comment on LUNAR NEW YEAR
STUDIO VISITS: ANA KHOURI
Sweater by Celine, All Jewelry by Ana Khouri
Photography by Dustin Mansyur | Hair and Makeup by Agata Helena | Interview by Benjamin Price
Ana Khouri spent her formative years between her native Brazil and the United States. First studying sculpture in Sao Paulo, Khouri later moved to New York attaining degrees from Parsons School of Design and the Gemological Institute of America. Upon completing her education in New York, Khouri traveled to London to attend Central Saint Martins, before ultimately returning to New York to set up her studio practice. For Khouri, designing jewelry is about the myriad of ways that a piece can take shape on its wearer, and the balance the work creates with the body. Ana's designs accentuate the natural elegance and organic lines of the exquisite materials that she utilizes, and her work's timeless quality transcends simple jewelry design into an ethereal world. Inspired by the magic of the earth and the cosmos, Khouri's work evokes the vast majesty of nature as a whole.
What was your motivation to pursue a career in jewelry design?
While still in art school, I had a show where I presented sculptures hanging from bodies. After the show, I received an order for ten pieces to be adapted and worn as jewelry. From that moment, it triggered a significant interest in jewelry making and led me to begin studying jewelry right after I graduated in 2004.
How did your formative years in Brazil affect your life and your design ethos? Did your parents – one an engineer, and one a pianist and teacher – influence your work and your creative career path?
Yes, absolutely. I grew up between beauty and art shaping my sensibility but always having functionality in mind. Later on, after graduation, I created sculptures for many years, which is how my jewelry business first began—it was all about creating the personal connection between sculpture and body lines.
Who is the "Ana Khouri" woman and how has she evolved over time? Is there a particular person whom you feel embodies your brand identity?
The Ana Khouri woman has an interest in or comes from the art world and values self expression through accessories. My clients usually have a uniqueness about them, something that is inherently their own. They are artistic, intelligent, inspirational and strong women who connect to my world, ideas, and work.
How do you begin your creative process when designing each new collection?
My idea of jewelry goes beyond the intended purpose of ornamentation, entering more into the realms of art and sculpture. The designs are about the myriad of ways that a piece can take shape by wearing it, and the balance the work creates with the wearer's body. I value simplicity above all else. Simplicity in composition and in motivation, as it is really the ultimate luxury. I focus on one-of- a-kind designs and limited edition pieces. My overall approach is born from the belief that jewelry has the ability to help create a deep connection with the wearer.
The history of jewelry goes back millenia and has been associated with love, war, class, magic and everything in between—how does your brand take this history into account in the process of design?
Our brand takes history into account through art in different forms. For instance, a lot of my inspiration in terms of art and sculpture come from artists like Louise Bourgeois, Calder, and Sera who have inspired me to look at shapes in relation to space and movement. But most of all, I think that jewelry should always be associated with one's personal history. I don't simply want these pieces to adorn, or to stand alone as beautiful objects; I want my designs to evoke their connection to space, its vastness, its majesty, yet also relate to one's personal history.
Is technology presently shaping jewelry design (production, form or function) and how do you foresee its role affecting jewelry design in the future?
For me, the process has consistently stayed the same. The way I start every piece is still the same for both sculpture and jewelry. I start by molding them by hand; it is a very intuitive and intimate process for me. I work on making the overall piece and then find a way to add functionality. The process of design is as important as the result. I normally spend up to six months on each design.
What can you tell us of your upcoming projects and collections? What direction is your brand going into for 2018?
I focus 50% of my time on unique pieces for personal clients, which is what I love doing most. The rest of my time goes to designing the edition pieces that you can find on the "specialty/multi brand" stores we choose to work with like Dover Street Market, Barneys, and Net-a-Porter to name a few. We have two special collaborations lined up for 2018 that I am very excited about. I feel very challenged in my work and that excites me more than anything.
For more information visit anakhouri.com
Posted in Art and Design, Creatives, Feature, From the Book, JewelryTagged ana khouri, art, artist, ARTIST STUDIO, brazil, design, fashion, Feature, female artist, female designer, Jewelry, jewelry design, luxury, new york city, organic, portrait, soho, studio, studio visit, urbanLeave a Comment on STUDIO VISITS: ANA KHOURI
RAUL DE NIEVES
Among a menagerie of rainbow-hued, glittering, plastic beaded life-sized figures, standing like a proud father overlooking his artistic creations, the charmingly unique Raúl de Nieves shares his artistic rituals with us in his cathedral of creations.
Photography by Tiffany Nicholson | Interview by Mariana Valdes Debes
Blending the lines between the human and the artificial, Raúl de Nieves' instantly recognizable shoes, masks, and humanoid figures are at once fantastical, desirous art pieces, yet remain relatable and human. Located in the heart of Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, de Nieves has created a studio filled with beads, fringe, ephemera, and anthropomorphized beings who appear to dance and interact with each other.and it is within that studio where we met the artist and sat down to discuss his art and unique perspective.
Born in Michoacan, Mexico, immigrating to the United States at the age of nine to California, and following the winding path to New York City, Raúl has made a name for himself and cut a swatch of color through the country. In our current state of political turmoil, climate change, and war, it is a breath of fresh air to see the talent that emanates from each piece of art that de Nieves creates as well as from the artist himself.
Here, Mariana Valdes Debes, an international art promoter of Mexican artists, sits in conversation with Raúl for Iris Covet Book.
Hello Raúl!
Hi Mariana, it's nice to talk to you.
Nice to talk to you as well, I think your work is amazing! I want to start from the beginning and ask how growing up in Michoacan, Mexico influenced your decision to enter into the world of art?
Growing up in Mexico, especially in Michoacan, was really enriching through the different cultures, craftsmen, and artisans. My family was always really pushing for us to see what Mexico had to offer. I remember seeing artisans working in their community, and I came to the United States with that knowledge and those memories. I'm not trying to emulate what I saw, but I am creating these narratives through performances and storytelling, painting, installation, and at the end it's about creating experiences for yourself and for others to be part of.
Your exhibition last summer "El Rio" was an analysis of the western cultural view of death and the antithetical idea of death as an "ecstatic mystery of life" – how did that concept come to fruition?
I've experienced a lot of death in my family, with my friends, and it's something that we all have to face at one point. My father passed away when I was very young, and it helped me understand that it's a part of life. Obviously we mourn when someone passes away, but how do we continue to celebrate their lives and what does that mean? To understand that they are not physically here, but emotionally they are closer to me now than ever. Having a really close family member pass away is one of the scariest things, yet it's also like becoming closer to that person. It's something that I had to experience and move past.
The majority of your body of work is comprised of fantastical humanoid creatures made of glued beads and other miscellaneous non-traditional material— how did the decision of using these materials come about?
The bead has been utilized by many cultures, but somehow we forget that it's this beautiful little piece of material that can transform in so many different ways. I went to New Orleans during Mardi Gras and came back with a suitcase full of beads. From then on it just made a lot of sense. All of a sudden they just started to appear more and more in my life.
Well the beaded shoes you created in your earlier work are really just to die for. Every time I see them I just wonder what it feels like to wear them.
They are actually really uncomfortable. I think that's the best part about it—they are beautiful objects of desire, but when you actually put them on they hurt. When I wear these objects in my performances, it becomes part of this struggle to portray myself as this specific character. I don't know, it's kind of magical. Sometimes we want these beautiful objects, but they are obviously not the most practical things we should long for, but we still do.
In an interview with MoMA, you stated that one sculpture, Day(Ves) of Wonder, took you seven years to complete but you never gave up on it. How does the process of creating each labor-intensive sculpture strengthen or teach you as an artist, and do you think that the number of years changed the idea behind the piece over time?
The work is made completely of beads and was a very complicated piece to build. I started to make these huge sculptures and was fantasizing about what it would be like to create a full, life-size figure out of beads. It took me so long because there was a lot of trial and error. The piece spoke back to me and taught me that every time I felt like I was failing, there was a possibility that it could continue to work as long as I had the ability to go forward. Till this day, it's one of my favorite works. Day(Ves) of Wonder derives from my mom's daycare called "Days of Wonder", and I was thinking how interesting it is for my mom to have these small periods of time with these kids as they grow up. I think this piece had this same idea of learning from each experience. I don't know when I'll have another moment to work on something for that long, or if I need to, but it really gave me so much understanding to know that every time I went back and started working on the piece, it was teaching me something in return. Maybe that's why that piece is so celebrated, because people feel that energy within its expression and within its movement.
You never gave up and you went through stages creating the piece, becoming a master of the process.
Yeah, exactly! There's beauty in creating this object that doesn't have a moving life or a soul. Through our emotions and the experiences that we project into these objects, the energy that resonates with the viewer creates the idea of a life behind it. To me, the sculpture is of a seven year-old child because of the time that I spent with it and how I saw myself growing. It was an ambitious task to take on and I don't want to reproduce another one because this piece lives on to be a celebration of an experience and a time. I still question what that piece actually continues to mean to me. That's the beauty of art, you can work on something forever. As humans we're constantly doing that; we're always working on who we are and trying to figure out what it means to be human.
That brings me to my other question. Surrounded by these figures every day, do they develop personalities and life stories of their own as you become attached to them?
Yeah, of course! It's amazing to build each piece with its own identity, and this identity can be processed through the relationship of the other works next to one another. I like to believe that we live in a fantasy world and we should give ourselves some freedom; life doesn't necessarily always have to be so concrete. As children, we get this beautiful time of our life to dream and imagine, and then we get to a certain age and give up on that. I constantly imagine myself to be this fantastical person, even if it's just for a moment.
The performance aspect of my work allows me to tap into these roles that I can't necessarily inhabit on an everyday basis. It's a great gift to be able to perform these silly experiences or cathartic moments through these characters, and there's comfort in putting on a mask and allowing yourself to not really be seen as human, but to be something fantastical. Having this ability to tap out is really cool and I think that's why a lot of cultures use costumes and perform these beautiful dances, plays, and fables to tap out.
I want to ask about your use of vibrant colors. How did your very maximal use of colors develop over time?
Colors can create very emotional experiences, and I guess that's why I tend to use so many bright hues of colors. I'm trying to learn how to really control what the color can do, what it means, and what it can put out into the world. In a way, color is like language, it allows for people to feel a certain way. The simplicity of these tools that we already have and putting them into artwork is not necessarily about following rules but following common sense and what feels natural.
Like just going toward the aesthetic of it, the feeling and the emotion that comes through the first time.
Yeah, for awhile my least favorite color was red, so for a year I only wore red to understand why. I had so many different experiences with strangers asking me why I was wearing all red. People would come up to me and try to tell me what they felt red meant to them. It was really interesting to do this exercise for a year, but I'll probably never do it again.
Well that must have felt like a performance. Yeah, exactly. I wasn't really intentionally trying to make it a performance, but it was a very interesting exercise. As a Mexican-American artist, how do you feel about the political climate in both countries? Do the current political events inspire or influence your work?
The current President having these views towards Mexico is very archaic. But I realize it's been happening since the beginning of time, as hard as it is to believe. I try not to be too political about it, because I know it's not just the United States versus Mexico; it's the world against one another. When will it end? Who knows? You would think by now we could unite and make this place even better than it is. We are made of the same matter; we need to understand that we will be stronger together. The idea of immigration is beautiful. It has allowed me to believe in acceptance for all. It is beautiful to know that you can somehow be who you are and be accepted and be part of a new nation. That idea has influenced a lot of my work. Everyone has a different experience with immigrating, and in the end I am thankful that I was accepted into a new culture, and that maybe I can influence more people to believe that this is a positive possibility.
A quick scroll through your Instagram reveals an interest in religion and historical references. Where does this interest come from?
Well, I'm a spiritual person. I have a lot of faith, and not just in history or the idea of religion. I like feeling that there is a higher power, or that perhaps believing is what creates a higher power. For me, spirituality is a way of life and it helps to ground myself and cope with all of these catastrophes happening around us.
What do you view as your biggest personal accomplishment to date and why?
Self-acceptance. I've been able to really accept myself, and not just myself, but also the people around me. In a way, that's a huge accomplishment. I think it's self-love and acceptance that's made me as open as I am, and as a result I can be my true self.
What can we expect next from you?
I'd like to make art more accessible, to create more experiences that can be accessible not just inside the art world, but also outside. I don't know whether that means creating public artworks, or if that even changes anything, but I just want to really feel like there is more openness to everything.
And in 10 years?
In 10 years? Maybe I'll have a dog.
Posted in Art, From the BookTagged artist, ARTIST STUDIO, brooklyn, COLOR, contemporary art, exclusive, Feature, fine art, INSTALLATION ART, interview, MASKS, MEXICO, modern art, MOMA, MOMA PS1, new york, RAUL DE NIEVES, sculpture, studio, TEXTURE, whitney biennial, whitney museum1 Comment on RAUL DE NIEVES
Once called the "enfant terrible" of the Young British Artists, Tracey Emin's confessional, autobiographical work fearlessly intimates that the artist is here to stay.
Portrait and Studio Photography by Oli Kearon | Interview by Sarah Nicole Prickett
In a beautiful new compendium entitled TRACEY EMIN: WORKS 2007-2017 by: Jonathan Jones, published by Rizzoli International Publications, we can view a decade's worth of work of the prolific and inimitable Tracey Emin. Compiled in close collaboration with the artist and unprecedented in its scope, this definitive book collects ten years of Tracey Emin's drawings, paintings, sculptures, appliques and embroideries, neons, video stills, and installations. A multimedia artist whose intensely personal work blurs the boundaries between art and life, Emin remains one of the most highly publicized contemporary British artists and continues to stir as much controversy as she has acclaim. A multimedia artist whose intensely personal work blurs the boundaries between art and life, Emin remains one of the most highly publicized contemporary British artists and continues to stir as much controversy as she has acclaim.
Moving chronologically through a prolific decade of work–from major public installations to recent reflective paintings and sculptures–this book shows a coherent vision that defies the idiosyncrasies of Emin's evolution as an artist. The same mixture of anger, hope, curiosity, and vulnerability that informs her delicate drawings and handwritten neon works can be felt in the darker tones of recent monoprints and the weight of later bronze pieces.
Written by Jonathan Jones, whose text places Emin's work in a broad art-historical context and sees this recent decade of her artwork as an entry point to examining her full career, this is a beautiful monograph on one of the world's most influential living artists.
She is, for enough of us, the first famous, knowable, and wealthy living artist to be a woman. She is the first we could name before we knew quite what art was. Because of this, she has helped decide what we think art is: the outrageous act of doing something because you can, which means that you should. Her sensibilities make crucial sense to the most desirous young artists and writers, mostly young women, but not always. Imitated by dozens, her style has become memetic, which makes it seem more original. It is original as she is. Tracey Emin is permanent.
That's what she says. The words–here to stay–are stitched in capital letters on one of the blankets she liked to make, in acerbic pastels, from the early 1990s on. This one, titled The Simple Truth, was made in 1994 for the Gramercy Park Hotel Art Fair, where a thirty-year-old Emin slept and showed her work in the same small room and did not feel welcome. I saw it in a book of Emin's pictures, My Photo Album, which I had not opened since buying it four years ago. Oddly the picture of the blanket took me by surprise. Odd because the ambiguity of "Here to stay," the provisional, limited idiom of the sojourn turning into a journey's broad conclusion, is blatantly Emin; and because the early work that is still her most widely known also concerns a bed, namely her bed; and because I had seen pictures of the blankets before and had apparently found this one forgettable. This time its freshness and its near-vulnerability was alarming. I imagined it making people want to cuddle her.
Emin is not generally thought of as an artist whose work keeps one warm at night. The title work in her most recent show, The Memory of Your Touch, is a self-portrait (1997—2016) on another hotel bed, taken from behind as she lies prostrate in red thigh-high stockings. Other works include sculptures, more naked and headless or faceless bodies in jaggy plaster or bronze; paintings that leak cold blood and cloud with the nacreous greys of frozen breath over dysmorphic outlines of the body in chalky blacks; and her signature hand-scrawled pleas in popsicle-pink, slinky tubes of light. Her idols are dead, untouchable, macho like Rodin and Schiele, and we see their relentless impressions on her figures. In her "neons" she is most obviously, saleably herself, and these have become fixtures in expansive hotel lobbies from London to Miami, New York to Istanbul. Most spell out more of her words: You Should Have Loved Me. I Followed You to the Sun. I Dream of Sleep. One, at a hotel in Oslo, traces a humanoid figure, bloated with withering limbs, made and titled in homage to Emin's favorite painting: Munch's The Scream. It seems made to induce the nightmare of your life.
Good Red Love, 2014 © Tracey Emin. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy: White Cube
Hers is like a Cinderella story stuck at a minute to twelve. Born like Kate Moss, in Croydon, South London, Emin spent her childhood in the rough-edged seaside town of Margate, where her mother ran a hotel her father owned. At thirteen she was, as she told us in her lacerating memoir, Strangeland, raped in an alley behind a tavern. At twenty-seven she had her first abortion, carrying the killed fetus home in the back of a taxi. Nearing thirty, with a degree from the Royal Academy in London but practically nothing to her name, she burned all the fine little lithographs she used to sign "Miss T.K. Emin" and started over as Tracey qua Tracey. She made five-minute films that looked like very unfunny home videos, like the one titled Why I Never Became a Dancer, which loops through her thwarted adolescence as images of Margate unspool: "The reason why these men wanted to fuck me, a girl of 14, was because they weren't men. They were less. Less than human. They were pathetic." It was 1993.
Sick, delicious egoism, paired with ironies that were a bit rich, was all the rage in Emin's milieu, which included Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst, and Anya Gallacio (it was in Artforum's 1992 cover story on Gallacio that Michael Corris coined the term YBAs, for Young British Artists). Emin and Lucas opened a shop in Brick Lane, painted the walls pink instead of white, and sold t-shirts with "slogans" like Have you wanked me yet? Emin titled her first solo show, facetiously but not self-deprecatingly, My Major Retrospective (1993). Corris called her Sandra Bernhard and Beuys in one body. "Emin's persona," he said with emphasis, "is designed to look as though it can take everything life can throw at her." Messiness, of course, accommodates more mess. When the mess becomes massive it looks like a cover-up, where the crime is ambition; and it's hard to be sure that ambition is not per se criminal. Only, it's apparent that when a woman reaches success before losing her sex appeal, her talents are perceived to be strategic, not divine. Emin's rise inspired some of the art world's hottest debates over craft, narcissism, and intent. Enviable, she could not be beloved.
In the six years between her "retrospective" and her first (and last) nomination, with My Bed (1999), for the Turner Prize, Emin made a brand out of getting blackout drunk and saying unbelievable things in the press. When she claimed, like she did after one particularly wild televised incident in 1997, to not even remember she'd been on television, the press insinuated she not only remembered but intended doing it–anything for a headline, as if she were both headless and single-minded, or strategically mental. The persona stuck to her work. Colm Toíbín, in a review for British Esquire of Emin's 20 Years retrospective, about summed it up, saying, "her drawings have a starkness and an aura of desperate loneliness attached to them. Her nudes are drawn with merciless care; they manage to achieve an effect which is spare and plaintive." He notes the effort in making My Bed "so unglamorous, all tossed, with knickers stained with menstrual blood, among other things, on the floor beside it, the last place you would lie down to rest."
Emin has been soberish, meaning she drinks wine but not spirits, for eighteen years, and it is no longer her fault that she forgets things. She tries to remember. She is trying to be remembered–as what? Enormous. Great. A vast power. Her work becomes vaguer and vaguer, even as it solidifies and gains mass. Primal scenes dissipate into other people's myths, words blow up and fuzz into lyricism. Something was lost when she shed the itchy habit of the first-person, shameful confession, when she stopped calling her pieces my that and my this and started saying your, yours, you. It became unclear what she loved. Something, some meaning. I cannot remember either what the meaning is.
Studio Photography by Oli Kearon
My lips moved across your face, 2015 © Tracey Emin. Photo: HV-studio, Brussels. Courtesy Xavier Hufkens
I call Tracey Emin at her studio after lunch, her time. There is the just-caught breath. There is the click of a lighter. Her voice, never mind all the cigarettes, retains the softness of Egyptian cotton. It's possible, somehow, to hear the 'e' in Tracey, the barest flutter of vowel.
She gives a sigh of displeasure at telling me what her days are like, or how they are not alike. Last week she was in Paris, Brussels, Rome. Today she and her team are renovating Emin's studio, which is over eight thousand feet of former factory space in Spitalfields, East London, with a swimming pool in the basement so she can do laps in the space of a smoke break. Next year the operations will relocate a new, larger space in Margate, where she can swim in the sea. London is "too noisy," says Emin, "and too full of shopping." She will wait until night to make, say, the molds for her sculptures, working from one o'clock in the morning until three o'clock, seven o'clock, eight. Then the emails start: "I don't even know how many emails I get, too many to count, every day. One demand after another. And all these questions."
Emin has a propensity to feel questioned. She listens badly and is quicker to hate a question than to hear it, perhaps because she assumes her interlocutors think the worst. When I say that she got famous by not sleeping, by seeming to party all night while actually staying up to work, what she hears is the accusation echoed: "I was working then and I'm working now. I don't like to go out. I never did." When I ask whether her works begin with shapes or notions or, perhaps, with their titles, which are memorable and seem so definitive, she says: "No, you're wrong." Then she considers. "The title is the subject," she says. "The title or the subject is a loose net that catches things, and whatever fits inside the net stays, if that's not too pretentious." Emin has never seemed pretentious. Her most-used words, in conversation, are different forms of work. "All the wildness is in the work," she says. And, "there is a calmness in me when I am working." And, "the work is working toward the crescendo of the subject." When she says that the subject is often a question, it becomes tempting, though unwise, to ask a question containing the word tautological.
Yet Emin must delight in being questionable. A few hours after she hangs up the phone, she says, she will be going out, but only to dinner, and only then to see her friend Mike Bloomberg. Bloomberg, the billionaire exmayor of New York, is Emin's idea of a man who should be leading the free world. She asks, when I express my doubts, whether I prefer having Trump. She says that my not voting in the election was smart, even if it wasn't a choice but a consequence of being Canadian. She thinks Mark Carney, a Canadian economist who currently serves as Governor of the Bank of England, would make another good President of the United States. There seems to be no useful reply. It occurs to me that Tracey Emin is a Conservative. It occurs to me, in particular, that I once read a story in the Telegraph saying that Tracey Emin feels abused by other artists for voting Tory. "Anyway," says Emin, "I am going to dinner tonight as a representative of–of myself, not as myself, but as a famous international woman artist."
When the artist was younger, she did not think of representation, or of being represented. She did not go around calling herself a feminist, and whether she was one is irrelevant to the fact that, as Emin herself has said, she experienced sexism at the hands of institutions and critics. But then, the word feminist was more a term of art than the marketing term it can be today, and it is today that the term sticks more easily to work signed "Tracey Emin." She is aware that female artists who are younger, prettier, and better off than she was at the start of her career are prone to copping her style: Petra Collins, the photographer, artist, and model who was born in Toronto the year Emin showed her first piece in London, has done a number of pieces spelling out Rihanna lyrics and late-night iMessages in Barbie-pink neons. Emin-lite, I might call it. Emin doesn't mind. She is not, as a woman, threatened by girl power.
"I don't mind being imitated when the artist who's doing it is really young," she says, not naming names. "It's natural for young artists to pay homage and even to copy. What annoys me is when people my age who are just copying and trying to make a name off my ideas." Emin is possessed of a congenital, gentle smirk, which often appears in flash photographs to be something meaner, or darker, like a scowl. It is easy to picture her scowling now. "Number one," she continues italically, "they're not going to heaven. Number two, they're not even artists, they're a sort of designer. And number three, how can they get any satisfaction out of it? They can't."
Emin believes that art is not a task but a vocation. She utters the phrase "doing what you love" as if it's never been said. She says, as she has said in most recent interviews, that her work is getting better as she ages. Better how? "Stronger." How does she know? "Because of the pleasure and understanding I find in it." Have there been any changes to elicit new strength, or understanding? "No, I am the same person." A breath. Then: "My mother died last year, which changed a lot about how I feel, how I am in the world." What was the biggest change? "My mother was alive," says Emin, "and now she's not."
Neon and Mirror/Diabond Installation view: The More Of You The More I Love You, Art Basel Unlimited, Basel, 2016 © Tracey Emin. Photo: Sébastien Bozon. Courtesy the artist, Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong, White Cube and Xavier Hufkens
She uses the word "my," and even the word "me," more seldomly now. In lieu of a diary, which makes her aware of living posthumously and inspires self-censorship, she writes and sends letters to her friends. "I'm the last person in England using the post office," says Emin, who also believes, despite what the government says, that "they are starting to take the post boxes away." In the titles of her recent exhibitions, as in her more private writings, the first-person possessive has given way to direct address: "Love is What You Want," "You Saved Me," "I Followed You to the Sun." She got "The Memory of Your Touch" from a moment in Lady Chatterley's Lover, a husband dead and a widow anguished, missing "the touch of him." Emin, a desirous reader who's usually too tired to read, has a different book open at every bedside: a biography of Nabokov, whose author she can't recall; I Love Dick by Chris Kraus; Provence by Lawrence Durrell. The last book she read cover to cover, almost six months ago, she sighs, was the wonderful novel Horse Crazy by Gary Indiana. She remembers a bit near the end, when a woman artist, suffering from myopia, thinks she sees a cute, brooding guy in a tavern; but when she gets close, he turns out to be a stain on the wall.
Her beds are various, scattered between her studio, her home in London, her other home in the South of France, her old family home in Margate. It's in France where Emin is "self-sufficient, or somewhat self-sufficient." She has peppers, tomatoes, and courgettes in her garden, and recently she grew her first pumpkins, though they were "not very good." There are no good restaurants around, so she cooks. I ask for a recipe. She can't think of one, and then she doesn't want to. "I thought we were going to talk about my art," says Emin. "I am not interested in these questions, and by the sounds of it," referring to the dilatory sound of my voice, "you aren't either." I laugh. She laughs less.
We talk about art, and it is nearly the same conversation. She lists the materials in her studio, starting with the Dionysian bronze she loves for its "machoness." She makes declarations of increasing dependence on herself. She means a "true" self. She also means a "real" self. "Total isolation, surrounded by nature," says Emin, "is what I need to really work." Never lonely in the studio, she continues to feel a longing in bed. Whether the longing is for a man is unclear. Not every you is the you of a very romantic pop song. Quieter, larger, is the you of a prayer.
We talk about her husband Stone, who is literally a stone, a piece of rock, and whom she married last spring in the garden in France where she found him. Stone and Emin "are having a nice relationship," she says, "although long-distance is always tricky." It occurs to me that I once read a story in the Telegraph saying that Georgia O'Keeffe left her unfaithful husband for a mountain. "God told me," said O'Keeffe, "that if I painted it enough I could have it." Emin, when I tell her this, softly repeats: have it. There is a word loved by the master self-portraitist, and painter of flora and fauna, Albrecht Dürer. The word is Konterfei, which means an exact likeness and signified to him the making of something exactly like. "Yes," says Emin. "Yes." She exhales at length. "You asked what I'm working on now. That's what I'm working on. The thing. The thing that it is. That's the end of the interview."
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