Tracey Emin

British artist Tracey Emin is in the news again for her new exhibit, "Those Who Suffer Love." The exhibit shows a more mature side of the 45 year old artist, though there is apparently a "an animated film created from hundreds of Emin's sketches of a masturbating woman" which compares the idea of masturbation to the idea of creating art alone. 

More interesting to me is her installation pieces from the 90's. People freaked out about this piece, called "My Bed" because of the used condoms and bloody underwear on the floor.

Her other famous work is called Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995. It is a tent stiched with 102 names of anyone she ever shared a bed with (not nessecarily sexual).  

I think the article I read on Emin (see link at bottom) sparked an interest in me because the public's reactions to her work speaks volumes on what people feel women can and cannot create. The art world is one on the most sexist work fields. 80% of art students are women but 80% of art featured in museums were done by men. And when female artists do something icky, something sexual, we feel uncomfortable in a way we probably wouldn't if the works were created by men. The idea still remains that ladies shouldn't be gross. Charlotte Roche wrote her gross-out, screw-hygiene feminist novel, Wetlands, after standing in a drugstore aisle staring at douches and thinking of how silly it was that we have to pretend our bodies are odorless and sanitary. These two women are reacting to the idea that we should be clean (i.e there should be no garbage surrounding our beds) and the we should not be so open as to share the names of those we have slept with. While I could counter-argue by saying that both of these women have become very popular by shocking people, and doesn't it suck that that is the only way for female art to gain notoriety, I am more in support. For hundreds of years the only place women had in art was as the subject, often portrayed in the nude, passive and docile. Now when we have the chance to create art, it makes sense that the reaction is to be anything but passive and docile. 

(That being said, I'm about as shocking as a glass of milk.) 

http://jezebel.com/5272588/former-enfant-terrible-tracey-emin-opens-new-show-reveals-even-more

http://jezebel.com/5199728/on-grossness-wetlands-tries-to-make-filth-a-feminist-issue