Tracy Emin - could someone please explain

The David Hockney exhibition in Saltaire near Bradford is well worth a visit.

Joan I concur!

PS
Just looked up Tracy Emin. What a con job her work is!!! Even when she does a proper painting it is poorly executed.

Don't like her.

And right at the end of the wikipedia bio, it said she's a Tory and thinks the current UK gov is the best they've ever had. Well, I guess that explains her taste.

I've seen a lot of Albrecht Dürer's work and loved it for the skill, though i do believe he'd have been a photographer in the modern era.

My personal favourites are the impressionists and Klimt. They are wild and colourful and beautiful.

As for ugly artwork that shows zero skill: I just think about the story of the Emperor's new clothes. I guess that makes it naked art.

Have just realised, now that I'm properly awake (what with dinner and turquoise bed sheets) that earlier I was confusing Dürer with Thomas Bewick. Bewick is the great woodcut artist. His animals and birds, in particular, are stunningly good.

With you, Frankel. Visited the Sacchi gallery. Happened across a room given over to an enormous mound of "household dust"...with a rope around it. Some visitors actually appeared to know what this means. I thought to myself, what a load of b****y rubbish. Know what - give me a day in my home with a Dyson and I can better that!!!

I don't understand art where the artist creates something mundane and leaves it to the viewer to react or not, as the case may be. I just don't see why it is interesting or why subsidised galleries should buy or hire it. This kind of art seems to be a triumph of marketing, best understood as a commercial enterprise rather than artist illumination. Good luck to anyone who has turned their life around by honest means but I would rather spend my entrance fee elsewhere.

I went to Margate to see the Turner exhibition with much the same feelings about Turner's work but the explanation provided about what he was trying to do and his impact on the Impressionists was very interesting. On the other hand, I saw an exhibition of Cy Twombly's work in Dulwich and could understand neither the work nor the pompous explanations provided. If the importance cannot be expressed simply, maybe it's not important.

I'm with you bags

For me, the difference between the Dürer hare and the Rothko Yellow and orange rectangles, is that it is glaringly obvious that the person who drew the hare had a great deal of skill and talent, whereas it is not obvious to me at all that the person who painted the yellow and orange rectangles had such skill or talent. For me, that matters. Which is not to say I don't appreciate some simple art, but when 'simple' art is passed off as great art, let's just say I hae ma doots!

In a similar way, I might think that a wonky, holey square knitted by a six year old is delightful to look at and a real accomplishment because of the effort involved in producing it, but the knitted fence on another thread is art because of the skill, the understanding of the materials and the technique, as well as the effort, is all obvious.

Further, I don't think Emin is trying to say the same thing with her unmade bed, nor Rothko with his rectangles, that Dürer was saying with his hare. On a positive/negative scale, Dürer's work has a high positive score, Emin's a large negative score, and Rothko's (so far; only heard of him yesterday) is somewhere between them.

I realise this is just my opinion. I guess art is in the eye of the beholder, like beauty, but I'm not ashamed to say that I don't like Emin's work, and I don't think she's an artist according to my understanding of the word. Some of her drawings show some skill but not much. Picasso's early drawings, and Dürer's drawings and woodcuts show astonishing skill. I am impressed by the skill of many artists whose paintings/drawings don't particularly appeal to me, so I regard their work as art. So far, I haven't been impressed by anything of Emin's that has come to my attention, though I must admit to having been astonished — at it, rather than by it.

Now I've burbled enough. Drowsy after a morning's garden work and going for a lie down.

could it have been in Houston crimson rings a faint bell. I agree that prints and paintings in this case very different.
I am going to Bilbao in September and looking forward to seeing the Hockneys there as did not get to RA exhibition.

To some extent, yes Joan - but then again there's this, which I also have a print of and love to bits. I would definitely call this 'art'.

painting.about.com/od/famouspainters/ig/famous-paintings/Getty-DurerHare-52286718.htm

I went to an Andy Warhol exhibition once at GOMA (Gallery of Modern Art) in Queensland. Some stuff was good, some stuff was pointless imho, but the bit that stuck in my minds was a quote of his:

"Art is what you can get away with"

crimson Here's a link for one of his more cheery works.
www.albrightknox.org/collection/collection-highlights/piece:rothko-orange-yellow/

Don't necessarily agree with all the blurb ......

Gosh, that's interesting. I suppose I haven't seen all of his paintings but it looks as if he uses colour to express a particular mood? [although I still find his maroon, black sort of colours relaxing]. Again maybe because they're so simple [unlike, say, a Turner or a Constable] instead of our brains being scrambled by what we see we just instantly feel the mood of that painting? He painted a whole chapel somewhere, didn't he, but I'm not sure what colours he used for that. Wish I'd been to that exhibition.

crimson - I've just back-tracked on this thread and read your post and I like what you have to say.

Elegran - I saw that exhibition too, and although a Rothko fan, found these particular canvases disappointing, and yes, depressing. He has done some wonderfully colourful and upbeat pictures as well though.

I saw a Rothko exhibition in London, and the huge canvases made sense seen in actuality, not as prints.I don't know the technicalities, but I think he must have done a very dark underpainting then covered it with red, with the darkness coming through the pigment from below. I do know that they had a profound effect - and not a cheerful one. Unlike Crimson my cares did not float away, On the contrary I could feel the depression which eventually drove him to suicide. It was partly the effect of dimly lit several roomfuls.

Nicely put crimson Somewhere in SPain i saw a painting that Picasso did at when he was 17 - realistic 19th c stuff, very photographic in quality.
He once said "It takes a very long time to become young" which I think refers to his lifetime's quest to escape from that training and rediscover spontaneity and simplicity in art.

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.

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 ].

But surely there's a place for conceptual art?

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

More power to his waspish tongue, say I!

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.

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

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.