- 14
TRACEY EMIN | Fantastic to Feel Beautiful Again
Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 GBP
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Description
- Tracey Emin
- Fantastic to Feel Beautiful Again
- neon
- neon: 102.9 by 121.9 by 5 cm. 40 1/2 by 48 by 2 in.
- plexiglass: 116.8 by 132 cm. 46 by 52 in.
- Executed in 1997, this work is number 3 from an edition of 3.
Provenance
White Cube, London
Acquired from the above by David Teiger in 1998
Acquired from the above by David Teiger in 1998
Exhibited
San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art, Supernova, Art of the 1990’s from the Logan Collection, December 2003 - May 2004, pp. 11 and 33, illustrated in colour (edition no. unknown, red version)
Literature
Honey Luard and Zoë Manzi, Eds., Tracey Emin, London 1998, p. 55, illustrated in colour (edition no. unknown)
Burkhard Riemschneider and Uta Grosenick, Eds., Art at the Turn of the Millennium, Cologne 1999, p. 146, illustrated in colour (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., London, Tate Gallery, The Turner Prize 1999, October 1999 - February 2000, illustrated in colour (on the cover, edition no. unknown)
Robert Preece, ‘Artist Over-and in-the Broadsheets’, Parkett, No. 63, December 2001, p. 54, illustrated in colour (edition no. unknown, red version)
Honey Luard and Peter Miles, Eds., Tracey Emin: Works 1963-2006, New York 2006, p. 342, illustrated in colour (another edition)
Burkhard Riemschneider and Uta Grosenick, Eds., Art at the Turn of the Millennium, Cologne 1999, p. 146, illustrated in colour (edition no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., London, Tate Gallery, The Turner Prize 1999, October 1999 - February 2000, illustrated in colour (on the cover, edition no. unknown)
Robert Preece, ‘Artist Over-and in-the Broadsheets’, Parkett, No. 63, December 2001, p. 54, illustrated in colour (edition no. unknown, red version)
Honey Luard and Peter Miles, Eds., Tracey Emin: Works 1963-2006, New York 2006, p. 342, illustrated in colour (another edition)
Condition
Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate although the tonality of the blue is slightly paler in the original. Condition: The work is in very good condition and full working order. The neon is attached to the original plexiglas backing and the fixings are also in very good and original condition. Extremely close inspection reveals a few minor handling marks and minute scuffs in isolated places.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
“I don't think I'm visually the best artist in the world, right? I've got to be honest about this. But when it comes to words, I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in terms of art – and it's my words that actually make my art quite unique.” Tracey Emin in conversation with Lynn Barber, ‘Show and Tell’, The Observer, 22 April 2001, online.
In Fantastic to Feel Beautiful Again, Tracey Emin’s distinctive script glows in searing blue neon. Created in 1997, two years before she was nominated for the Turner Prize, this work narrates the moment that young British art took the world by storm. An indelible part of the media designated YBA group of artists – an infamous cohort that alongside Emin, boasted Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas as its main protagonists – Emin courted international attention for a no-holds-barred approach to interweaving artistry and autobiography. Chronologically situated between her breakthrough piece, Everyone I have ever slept with, 1963-1995 (1995) and the ground-breaking My Bed (1998), the present work is fuelled by the relentless vortex of emotion that constitutes a practice in which art is life, and life is art. With Emin’s work we are invited into her world, a world of raw feeling, aggression, pain, insecurity, intensity, love, hate, highs and lows; hers is a body of work that speaks the language of humanity in all its glorious reality. Indeed, with Emin, the genre of realism takes on a bold conceptual edge, updated for the Twenty-First Century. As Rudi Fuchs has explained: “[Emin] has introduced a practice of realism, and a particular honesty, from which there is no returning. She is an honest realist” (Rudi Fuchs, ‘A Particular Honesty’, in: Rudi Fuchs, et al., Tracey Emin: Works 1963/2006, New York 2006, p. 397).
Adopting the medium of neon and building on the post-modernist canon established by conceptual artists of the 1960s, principally Joseph Kosuth and Bruce Nauman, Emin’s neons re-write the knowing word play of her male forebears. In contrast to the neutrality of Kosuth and Nauman's capital letters, Emin’s are articulated in her signature expressive handwriting; the effect emphasises the personal nature of her commentary. However, examples such as the present work, Fabulous to Feel Beautiful Again, or Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Cover My Body in Love (1996) go beyond the purely personal; they are mantra-like statements that bespeak a kind of everyman/woman. First uttered in Emin’s voice, these words express a universality that is at once saccharine and kitsch, yet allude to a yearning or needfulness that belies their sentimentality. Words play an enormously important role for Emin; they appear appliqued onto patchwork quilts, sewn on chairs and into tents, scratched into the plates of her prints, and, as in the present work, emblazoned in the tantalising electric glow of a neon sign. As Emin herself has contended: “I don't think I'm visually the best artist in the world, right? I've got to be honest about this. But when it comes to words, I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in terms of art – and it's my words that actually make my art quite unique” (Tracey Emin in conversation with Lynn Barber, ‘Show and Tell’, The Observer, 22 April 2001, online). Ultimately, Emin’s art is about communicating in the most unguarded and urgent way, communicating her thoughts, sharing her feelings and experiences in the form of searingly honest confessionals. “I want society to hear what I am saying”, Emin states, “for me, being an artist isn’t just about making nice things or people patting you on the back; it’s some kind of communication, a message... about very, very simple things that can be really hard. People do get really lonely, people do get really frightened, people do fall in love, people do die, people do fuck. These things happen and everyone knows it but not much of it is expressed. Everything’s covered with some kind of politeness, continually, and especially in art…” (Tracey Emin in conversation with Stuart Morgan, ‘The Story of I’, Frieze, Issue 36, May 1997, p. 60).
In Fantastic to Feel Beautiful Again, Tracey Emin’s distinctive script glows in searing blue neon. Created in 1997, two years before she was nominated for the Turner Prize, this work narrates the moment that young British art took the world by storm. An indelible part of the media designated YBA group of artists – an infamous cohort that alongside Emin, boasted Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas as its main protagonists – Emin courted international attention for a no-holds-barred approach to interweaving artistry and autobiography. Chronologically situated between her breakthrough piece, Everyone I have ever slept with, 1963-1995 (1995) and the ground-breaking My Bed (1998), the present work is fuelled by the relentless vortex of emotion that constitutes a practice in which art is life, and life is art. With Emin’s work we are invited into her world, a world of raw feeling, aggression, pain, insecurity, intensity, love, hate, highs and lows; hers is a body of work that speaks the language of humanity in all its glorious reality. Indeed, with Emin, the genre of realism takes on a bold conceptual edge, updated for the Twenty-First Century. As Rudi Fuchs has explained: “[Emin] has introduced a practice of realism, and a particular honesty, from which there is no returning. She is an honest realist” (Rudi Fuchs, ‘A Particular Honesty’, in: Rudi Fuchs, et al., Tracey Emin: Works 1963/2006, New York 2006, p. 397).
Adopting the medium of neon and building on the post-modernist canon established by conceptual artists of the 1960s, principally Joseph Kosuth and Bruce Nauman, Emin’s neons re-write the knowing word play of her male forebears. In contrast to the neutrality of Kosuth and Nauman's capital letters, Emin’s are articulated in her signature expressive handwriting; the effect emphasises the personal nature of her commentary. However, examples such as the present work, Fabulous to Feel Beautiful Again, or Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Cover My Body in Love (1996) go beyond the purely personal; they are mantra-like statements that bespeak a kind of everyman/woman. First uttered in Emin’s voice, these words express a universality that is at once saccharine and kitsch, yet allude to a yearning or needfulness that belies their sentimentality. Words play an enormously important role for Emin; they appear appliqued onto patchwork quilts, sewn on chairs and into tents, scratched into the plates of her prints, and, as in the present work, emblazoned in the tantalising electric glow of a neon sign. As Emin herself has contended: “I don't think I'm visually the best artist in the world, right? I've got to be honest about this. But when it comes to words, I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in terms of art – and it's my words that actually make my art quite unique” (Tracey Emin in conversation with Lynn Barber, ‘Show and Tell’, The Observer, 22 April 2001, online). Ultimately, Emin’s art is about communicating in the most unguarded and urgent way, communicating her thoughts, sharing her feelings and experiences in the form of searingly honest confessionals. “I want society to hear what I am saying”, Emin states, “for me, being an artist isn’t just about making nice things or people patting you on the back; it’s some kind of communication, a message... about very, very simple things that can be really hard. People do get really lonely, people do get really frightened, people do fall in love, people do die, people do fuck. These things happen and everyone knows it but not much of it is expressed. Everything’s covered with some kind of politeness, continually, and especially in art…” (Tracey Emin in conversation with Stuart Morgan, ‘The Story of I’, Frieze, Issue 36, May 1997, p. 60).