Tracey Emin Is Serious

The artist has always worked in the confessional mode. After surviving cancer, she sees no reason to hold anything back.

- Jerry Saltz

THE FIRST TIME I laid eyes on Tracey Emin was in 1994 in a wee suite of rooms in the former Gramercy Park Hotel. She was part of what was known as the YBAs (Young British Artists), who

had invaded the New York art scene in the mid-’90s, and made her U.S. debut at the Gramercy International Art Fair, the indie edition of what ultimately morphed into the gargantuan Armory Show. Emin, a vision of power, passion, nonchalance, and abandon, was smoking a cigarette in bed, lounging under a quilt that had the names of family members, diaristic recollections, and places she’d lived sewn onto it. She had the presence of an artist casual but half mad with determination. ¶ Emin would go on to become a legend in her native England but never caught fire here in the same way. She was so far out in front of all curves that her installations like 1998’s