Tracey Emin : two questions

I came across two observations by Tracey Emin in The Independent of 08/08/08 which I thought might be worthy of further consideration and comment. I had planned to use the following in a somewhat longer post at some time in the future, but then reading comments to my Heads, tails, both or neither post, thought it might be more relevant and to that extent more intersting to post them now.

The first followed a description of the effort involved in the installation of her retrospective exhibition at The Edinburgh Festival,
as part oof which she complained about how personal were most of the reviews - not surprising really, I thought, given that the exhibition, like most of her work, is focussed on the personal aspects of her life and its hardships. Then came a comment about how great it would be if she was to die and it turned out that all her work had been made by a really thick-jawlined 6ft 2in Geordie guy and that she herself had hardly ever existed. It's a topic that comes up frequently in one form or another, Tracey just makes it personal, because that is what she does, life having made of her what it has. The basic question, though, is: What difference would/should it make to a work of art if it was suddenly discovered to have been made by someone else? (You could argue, of course, that the question cannot be asked of Tracey, because the work, being what it is, could not have existed in her absence. That does not affect the validity of the question, of course.


She then went on to suggest that most of us, given the choice, would not have come here (i.e. been born) to this planet, to everything I know, uninvited. But this is why I feel so lucky. Art came and got me. Art with its big ideas and its engulfing arms picked me up and swept meaway to another world. It is another of our familiar modern cries: does evrything (life) have to have a meaning? If so, where does that meaning originate?I have to agree with Tracey that life has no meaning except we human beings give it one. (I have not always thought that.) Where she and I part company is ober her contention that art can supply The Big Idea that will give life meaning. It is not the artist's role, I fear, to do that. The artists role, it seems to me, is to work within the framework of the big idea, to express, expound - and maybe to extend - it. Michelangelo did not originate the big ideas on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He expounded them, developed some, propogated some offshoots, but the big ideas themselves he had found in the scriptures. The scriptures themselves were not the source. The big ideas predated even them. The scriptures, too, were working within the framework set be society. The scriptures have long ago lost their pre-eminent position. So have the priests along with them. There are various candidates out to succeed them: artists, philosophers, scientists. The latter seem to be winning - is that where society took the wrong turn?