These days, she sends valentines to her friends. She prefers Hallmark cards with “cute little animals,” and gets the post office clerk to write out her message and the recipient’s address, so that her identity remains secret. “Everyone likes to get valentines,” she said.
She ordered another vodka tonic, then affectionately recalled an e-mail that her studio had received from newlyweds who had bought a digital neon work, priced at eighty dollars, and had projected it at their wedding. (Works purchased from s[edition] can be streamed on TVs or played through apps on your phone.) “Isn’t that romantic?” Emin asked. Since artists retain the image rights to a work even after the physical object has been sold, s[edition] can offer inexpensive digital versions of art works, which in their physical forms cost much, much more. (P. Diddy reportedly paid around $95,000 for an “I Listen To The Ocean And All I Hear Is You” neon at Art Basel Miami Beach, in 2011.)
“I love art,” Emin went on. “And art loves me more than any man has ever loved me. Art has never let me down. When I’ve been my lowest of my low, art has always come and picked me up. I can’t say that about the men I’ve had relationships with. It’s about forever and ever. The last thing I do before I die will be art, definitely. Whereas people come and people go. I wish I could have a lover like art, that loved me as passionately as art loves me, or who I could give as much back to.”
She insisted that, if you read closely, you’ll find this skepticism about the permanence of love in the work; even the sweetest of the Times Square messages has a twist. “‘I Promise To Love You,’ means like, What, you’re not going to love me? Why have you got to promise?” she explained. “‘I Listen To The Ocean And All I Hear Is You’ can be, You’re alone, and you’re walking on the beach, and it sounds really beautiful, and you think of the person who loves you. Or, on the other hand, you’re trying to listen to the ocean and this person will just not stop fucking talking.”
- Tracey Emin Loves Art
BY EMMA ALLEN
FEBRUARY 2013 THE NEW YORKER
