Tracey Emin Quotes

Quotes about:

• There should be something revelatory about art.
  It should be totally creative and open doors
  for new thoughts and experiences.

  Tracey Emin

  Art, Doors, Creative

  79 Copy quote

• Art is like a lover whom you run away from but who comes back and picks you up.

  Tracey Emin

  Running, Art, Lovers

  82 Copy quote

• What's really good about the word 'art' is that 'art' is a word like 'love,' or 'god,' or whatever. It transcends so many things.

  Tracey Emin

  Art, Like Love, Art Is

  51 Copy quote

• The soul will always do what it needs to do.

  Tracey Emin

  Soul, Needs

  6 Copy quote

• Most people don't do something seminal. I've done it twice: with my tent and my bed. Picasso did it with Cubism.

  Tracey Emin

  Art, People, Bed

  65 Copy quote

• When it comes to words I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in art – and it's my words that actually make my art quite unique.

  Tracey Emin

  Art, Unique, Impossible

  "Show and Tell". Interview with Lynn Barber, www.theguardian.com. April 22, 2001.

  54 Copy quote

• Have you ever longed for someone so much, so deeply that you thought you would die? That your heart would just stop beating? I am longing now, but for whom I don't know. My whole body craves to be held. I am desperate to love and be loved. I want my mind to float into another's. I want to be set free from despair by the love I feel for another. I want to be physically part of someone else. I want to be joined. I want to be open and free to explore every part of them, as though I were exploring myself.

  Tracey Emin

  Heart, Mind, Despair

  48 Copy quote

• What is truth? Truth doesn't really exist. Who is going to judge whether my experience of an incident is more valid than yours? No one can be trusted to be the judge of that.

  Tracey Emin

  Judging, Incidents, Trusted

  Interview with Stephan Collishaw, www.believermag.com. April 2004.

  36 Copy quote

• I like poor materials. I couldn't see myself making a bronze sculpture - it's not me. I like neon, because it's moving constantly and like drawing. The chemicals going through the neon turns me on really - it's sexy. I like fabrics, but one of the main things with objects is that I really have to love them before I can use them. I have to have the object around me a long time. The little chairs I used in my last White Cube show are ones that my dad bought for me. A sort of a psychometry with objects and things. It's like the pieces I've made are my things.

  Tracey Emin

  Sexy, Dad, Moving

  Source: www.artdesigncafe.com

  18 Copy quote

• I found that life has to be edited to continue.

  Tracey Emin

  Found, Edited

  Tracey Emin, Carl Freedman, Rudolf Herman Fuchs, Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Tracey Emin: works 1963-2006”, Rizzoli Intl Pubns

  15 Copy quote

• I feel physically ill if I don't make work, I don't create. I don't feel very good. I don't feel right, I feel wrong.

  Tracey Emin

  Very Good, Ill, Feels Right

  23 Copy quote

• The words went round and round and round in my mind and my body, until I knew they were no longer my words but something that had been carved into my heart. And now my soul was crying.

  Tracey Emin

  Heart, Soul, Mind

  Tracey Emin (2013). “Strangeland”, p.79, Hachette UK

  32 Copy quote

• When I have an exhibition, I usually arrange it so that if people want to, they can spend two hours there. That way, people who like it don't feel cheated when they go. I want them to walk into the exhibition space and look low and at other levels and angles. The same with emotions. I want them to be emotionally manipulated, to come out feeling something. I want them to laugh, smile, feel sad. Even if they feel angry, that's okay.

  Tracey Emin

  People, Laughing, Feelings

  Source: www.artdesigncafe.com

  13 Copy quote

• I know people went to laugh at my bed and to jeer at it. Still, at least they actually went to see it.

  Tracey Emin

  People, Laughing

  Source: www.artdesigncafe.com

  5 Copy quote

• I've worked really hard. I've made three pieces of seminal art in my life. If I died tomorrow, I'd be remembered for making them. There are a lot of artists who, no matter how hard they work in their lives, will never make anything seminal.

  Tracey Emin

  Art, Three, Pieces

  33 Copy quote

• There are things going on in galleries recently that have shocked me. What I'm going to say is really controversial, but what I find the most provocative is the commerciality of art in general. And the fact that a lot of people have forgotten what the meaning of art is and what the intention behind it is.

  Tracey Emin

  Art, People, Forgotten

  Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

  13 Copy quote

• The reason why I'm popular as an artist in this country is because it suits the psyche of the nation at this time. Ten years ago, my work wouldn't have had any currency, any popularity at all. Before in this country, you had to be accepted. You had to be part of the group. Now it's probably more trendy to have a problem.

  Tracey Emin

  Country, Artist, Problem

  Source: www.artdesigncafe.com

  12 Copy quote

• I had become conscious of my physicality, aware of my presence and open to the ugly truths of the world. At the age of thirteen, I realised that there was a danger in innocence and beauty, and I could not live with both.

  Tracey Emin

  Age, World, Ugly

  19 Copy quote

• Being an artist and having to be responsible for the art that you make is really quite challenging, and as you get older it becomes more and more difficult.

  Tracey Emin

  Art, Challenges, Aging

  19 Copy quote

• There is nothing difficult about my work, and people get to hear it from me.

  Tracey Emin

  People, Difficult

  27 Copy quote

• Sometimes i feel lonely, but it's ok

  Tracey Emin

  Lonely, Sometimes, Feels

  5 Copy quote

• All the mistakes I've ever made in my life have been when I've been drunk. I haven't made hardly any mistakes sober, ever, ever.

  Tracey Emin

  Life, Mistake, Drunk

  20 Copy quote

• Criticism on my works is like this: you've worked hard all of your life, you went to Oxford, and you've done this and that, and you're an art critic. Your job is to unravel the "secret" or whatever, and you come across an entity like me. It's going to piss you off. Because there's no great secret, what you see is what you get, and anyone can understand what I'm doing. So, it's almost like I make this critic-person redundant, just by my attitude, and they resent me for that.

  Tracey Emin

  Art, Attitude, Secret

  Source: www.artdesigncafe.com

  13 Copy quote

• I want to spend my life with someone and do nice things and go on adventures, read books and have nice food and celebrate things. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in the bedroom like some people who just go to bed and never get out again.

  Tracey Emin

  Nice, Book, Adventure

  "The Saturday interview: Tracey Emin". Interview with Mark Brown, www.theguardian.com. May 25, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

• My New Year's Eve is always 2 July, the night before my birthday. That's the night I make my resolutions. And this year scares the life out of me, because no matter how successful, how good things appear, there is always a deep core of failure within me, although I am trying to deal with it. My biggest fear, this coming year, is that I will be waking up alone. It makes me wonder how many bodies will be fished out of the Thames, how many decaying corpses will be found in one-room flats. I'm just being realistic.

  Tracey Emin

  New Year, Successful, Night

  Tracey Emin (2013). “Strangeland”, p.102, Hachette UK

  8 Copy quote

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