Tracy Emin - could someone please explain

Definitely not!

Dunno! Some of her art is fabulous and she is obviouly well trained, but her concept art stumps me. I believe she is now a professor of what she describes as 'drawing!'

I am sure someone will come up with a clever sounding explanation to define art but she is not my cup of tea.

I saw her on TV, doing some of her 'drawings' which just looked like doodles. However, I assume that some gullible collectors would pay a small fortune for her doodles!

In a word, kitty...Nah!

Our wee grandson's bib, on the other hand, that's more like a work of art - especially when he's been eating pasta

Blooming great marketing in her case I think.
She did one of the "olympic posters" - hopeless, along with most of rest. My D neice, just completing masters in modern art said "hmm, none of them are graphic artists - so why were they asked to do posters?"

But she also wisely observed, when we visited the modern sculpture exhibition at Waddeson - that it was just a case of whether you like it or not.
I personally liked the photos I took of her lying next to the Gormley man. I will try to upload some later maybe. I think my photo is Art.

Oh, I managed it. Look on my profile photos. One of my better photographic moments.

Something has gone wrong - no pictures on your profile page except one of you.

Try again. I can see them. One of me and one of DN and the Gormley.

I guess in fairness TE has put Margate on the map. Which is probably a good thing if you live there.

Got it now, Jess. Clever idea.

Why does the phrase "The emperor's new clothes" spring to mind?
I have to be very careful to remain non-committal as DD2 and future SIL are artists, DD2's boyfriend/partner is a sculptor - so opinions like "What a load of pretentious rubbish" or even "What?"have to remain firmly unarticulated!

That was exactly the phrase I used gracesmum. We have a few artists in our family too but most agree with us! I think the point made by Jess hits the nail on the head. I'm glad its not just me!

I went to Tracy Emin's Exhibition in London some months ago and experienced a strong emotional response to a lot of it. I'm a great fan and I really admire what she has made of her life from such an awful start.

The classical conservative art establishment hates people like her; Brian Sewell wrote a vitriolic article about her stuff.

Not really qualified to judge her drawings. She is certainly not the only one who can do a squiggle of a few lines and find it selling for a lot of money. Picasso springs to mind. And what about that bloke who just fills his canvas with a couple of colours - er can't think of his name at the moment, Lothko or something.

For anyone in the northern home counties I do recommend a trip to Waddeson near Aylesbury where you will see a wide range of recent Brit sculpture this summer, in great surroundings. (as in photo) If you have never seen a Damien Hurst bisected pig, then now is you chance for instance. Being an ex science teacher, I just wanted to label it.
I suspect a number of pieces looked a lot better in the outdoors rather than in a london gallery.
The pig was not outdoors.

Ironically

Happy that TE has made something of her life. Happy for anyone to do that. But I have yet to see a decent, let alone skilful drawing by her. Emperor's new clothes, yes. As a friend of mine said, art school's don't teach youbhow to draw anymore, they teach you how to sell anything you churn out.

oh DAMN! I've got apostrophe-itis again. Sorry!

Mark Rothko, petallus - I love most of his work. Have a print of the Untitled (Yellow and Orange) 1954 framed on my bedroom wall. It is a delight.

I am not a fan of Brian Sewell - he really can have a nasty turn of phrase.

The only trouble with Brian Sewell is that he knows what he's talking about.

More power to his waspish tongue, say I!

But surely there's a place for conceptual art?

By the time Picasso was a teenager he could draw so well it's as if there was nowhere else to go other than abstract. I'm not sure what skills Rothko had artistically but [I'm repeating what I wrote on another thread] lots of people try to 'do a Rothko' because it looks easy. They can't. Looking at a Rothko painting, all of my cares just drift away. How he did that, given that he suffered from depression and, I believe commited suicide is beyond me. Easy to paint a beautiful picture and make the viewer 'feel' something; far more difficult to do that with an abstract painting [possibly just as comedy is far more difficult than drama]. As for Tracey Emin, her work has never made me feel anything, although I must admit to not seeing much of it[ I did like her in the family tree programme, though]. I do think there's a place for conceptual art,; a way of making us look at things differently [or actually just LOOK at something]. Perhaps it should have been given a different name withought using the word 'art' which makes one assume that the 'artist' can draw rather well.Like Rothko it's not as easy as it looks; what can any of us come up with as a piece of conceptual art; when I try to do that my mind just goes blank [nothing new there then ].

I like your way of putting it, crimson. Perhaps it is something childlike that they achieve? I do like DD's early drawings.

However, I also liked what feetle said. I know nothing about Rothko (had a look at images of his paintings just now and found they were not to my taste) or Brian Sewell (read an article about him), but I do like incisive writing, and I'm certain that a lot of bullshit is written about art. I've always felt it was a deliberate ploy to make people feel inferior if they didn't "understand" some weird piece of "conceptual" art, and I've always felt that that is rather a nasty ploy.