‘My Bed’: How Tracey Emin made the most controversial sculpture ever made
Dear reader, most visual art means precisely nothing to me. I can appreciate the time, effort and skill that goes into making it, but no photograph and especially no painting, has ever hit me the way a piece of music or a piece of film ever has. I thought sculpture would be exactly the same, and then I saw a picture of Tracey Emin’s My Bed.
I was completely knocked for six by it in a way I did not see coming because, quite simply, I’d never seen anything like it. I wasn’t looking at some stylised “work of art” to stroke your chin over and project your own meaning on. I was looking at something that very much had a meaning of its own. An undeniable presence which made those who’d been in a similar place that Emin had been when she made the sculpture feel seen. Quite simply, I took one look at Emin’s bed and thought, “Girl, same.”
For those that aren’t aware, My Bed is exactly what it says on the tin. In the aftermath of a breakup that shook her to her core in the mid 1990s, Emin spent four days in bed doing little else other than sleeping, fucking and boozing to numb the pain of whatever she was going through. On day five, she finally rose from her stupor and took stock of where her life was at. In doing so, she saw her bed as an illustration of that dark period of her life and decided to make it her next work of art.
Thus, My Bed is a recreation of that moment of clarity. A dishevelled Duvan strewn with detritus like stained period pants, lager cans, a large, empty vodka bottle and an overflowing ashtray on the bedside table. My experience involved less cigs and alcohol and more soda bottles and superhero comics but that didn’t mean I couldn’t relate to the feeling of seeing your bed as a mirror. One rarely likes what they see in any mirror.
So, I was moved by it. Then I went to check what other people thought of it…
Why was ‘My Bed’ so controversial?
Of course, I imagined this would be a controversial piece in the art world. After all, it’s a provocative, seemingly simple sculpture made by a woman; you don’t have to be an art fiend to know that those don’t tend to go down very well. On the surface, My Bed goes well beyond the old chestnut of “my kid could do that” and straight into the world of “I, myself, have done that, a lot.” Thus, I imagined what a lot of discourse about the nature of the piece would be.
On the one hand, I wasn’t wrong. On the other hand, even I wasn’t quite aware of just how much of a firestorm of controversy My Bed generated, especially after it was listed for the Turner Prize. This was a work that several critics trashed for being lazy, meaningless, and navel-gazing. A work that damaged the very reputation of the Turner Prize it was nominated for. Then it was exhibited. Seemingly, that’s when people started to get really, really angry.
Two performance artists jumped on the bed and had a pillow fight on top of it when it was on display at the Tate. A Swansea housewife drove all the way to London in an attempt to clean it up. Yet no-one seemed to realise at the time that this is the reaction that meaningful, affecting art tends to get when it’s first exhibited. There were riots at the premiere of The Rite of Spring. Rothko paintings still get slashed to this day. I may be a layman to all this but I do think that My Bed deserves to be listed alongside those great works.
Yes, it’s kind of gross. Yes, it’s uncouth. Yes, it’s unapologetic. That’s what makes it unforgettable.