Tracey Emin, 20 YearsModern Art Galleries, Edinburgh http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e75c99e-602c-11dd-805e-000077b07658.html
When the dust and glitter settle and the Young British Artists become history, four works will frame the movement: Damien Hirst's sliced shark "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living"; Tracey Emin's "My Bed" with its detritus of stained knickers and condoms, and her embroidered tent, "Everyone I have Ever Slept With, 1963-1995"; and Hirst's diamond skull, "For the Love of God". Death, sex and money - mankind's, and art's, eternal concerns - refracted in a new artistic vocabulary gave Hirst's and Emin's works iconic status. Both are celebrities - "Tracey" and "Damien" to the British public - yet whereas Hirst's reputation as a pioneer is assured, Emin's, despite her recent Royal Academy election, remains uncertain.
Much therefore hangs on this first retrospective, spanning 20 years and including pieces in all media: drawings (Emin's gift as a natural draughtsman underpins her work), paintings, the monoprints "Family Suite" - among them a deliberately clumsy self-portrait of the artist as an uneasy 10-year-old; photography ("I've Got It All", showing Emin, legs splayed open, stuffing money into her crotch); the post-abortions installation "Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made". Textiles such as the appliqué blanket "Hotel International" and lovelorn neon signs like "You forgot to kiss my soul" particularly reference the Margate guesthouse, fairground and seaside booths where she grew up, but throughout, making art in so raw and frank a way from her own difficult life has been Emin's risk and achievement. She stands in the once marginal tradition of an art of female experience - Louise Bourgeois, Paula Rego, Annette Messager, Maria Lassnig; that this tradition has moved centre stage in the last 20 years is in part due to her own triumphs.
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