I have got another 30 or so years left working, maybe 20 physically working really hard, so I've got to make the most of it, I can't mess around anymore, when you get to my age you only have the rest of your life to get it right, you haven't got all your life. I'm homing in on what's really important to me now.

Tracey Emin

Categorized in : Arts

There should be something revelatory about art.

Tracey Emin

creative doors art

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

Tracey Emin

lovers running art

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

bed people art

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

feelings laughing people

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

like-love art-is art

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

despair mind heart

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

unique impossible art

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

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

forgotten people art

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

pieces three art

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

incidents trusted judging

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

problem artist country

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

soul mind heart

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

feels-right very-good ill

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

Tracey Emin

difficult people

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

secret attitude art

I found that life has to be edited to continue.

Tracey Emin

edited found

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

aging challenges art

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

drunk mistake life

I'm not opposed to commerce, even though I'm an artist.

Tracey Emin

commerce artist