Tracey Emin

 ( 1963 Births ) 

The exhibition was re-shown at the newly opened Munch Museum in Oslo, with Emin being the first artist to show alongside the Norwegian painter. Works included recent paintings, as well as her seminal work My Bed. Emin had suffered from cancer the year before the exhibit, and was unsure whether she would be able to see it herself. The exhibition travelled to the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2021.(14 December 2011). Tracey Emin to become Professor of Drawing at RA. BBC News. Retrieved 26 April 2020. Reviewing the exhibition for Londonist, Tabish Khan said: "It captures that sense of loneliness I've struggled to put into words, and left me emotionally spent". It was also reviewed favourably in The Guardian with Tim Adams writing "This exhibition is not comprehensive enough to be billed as a retrospective, but even so, everything that Emin has made and felt and suffered in the past is brought to full expression in it".

The monoprints often incorporate text as well as image, though some bear only text, others only image. The text appears as the artist's stream of consciousness. Some critics have compared Emin's text-only monoprints to ransom notes. Emin frequently misspells words, deliberately or due to the speed at which she does each drawing. In a 2002 interview with Lynn Barber, Emin said: "It's not cute affectation. If I could spell, then I would spell correctly, but I never bothered to learn. So, rather than be inhibited and say I can't write because I can't spell, I just write and get on with it."

Emin created a key series of monoprints in 1997 with the text Something's WrongTerrebly Wrong (1997) or There Must Be Something Terebley Wrong With Me Something (1997) written with spelling mistakes intact in large capital letters alongside "forlorn figures surrounded by space, their outlines fragile on the page. Some are complete bodies, others only female torsos, legs splayed and with odd, spidery flows gushing from their vaginas. They are all accompanied by the legend There's Something Wrong."

Other key monoprints include a series from 1994 and 1995 known as the Illustrations from Memory series which document Emin's childhood memories of sexual awakening and other experiences growing up in Margate, such as Fucking Down An Ally 16/5/95 (1995) and Illustrations from Memory, the year 1974. In The Livingroom (1994). Emin further produced a set of monoprints detailing her memories of Margate's iconic buildings such as Margate Harbour 16/5/95 (1995), The Lido 16/5/95 (1995), and Light House 15/5/95 (1995). Other drawings from 1994 include the Family Suite series, part of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art collection, consisting of 20 monoprints with "archetypal themes in Emin's art: sex, her family, her abortions, and Margate". This series of monoprints was displayed for the first time from August 2008 at the Edinburgh gallery as part of her first major retrospective, which has been called the Summer Blockbuster exhibition. Support us , nationalgalleries.org. Retrieved 6 May 2016. A further Family Suite II set was exhibited in Los Angeles in November 2007 as part of Emin's solo show at the Gagosian gallery. Gagosian Gallery – Exhibition – Tracey Emin , gagosian.com. Retrieved 6 May 2016.

Emin's monoprints are rarely displayed alone in exhibitions. Emin has made several works documenting moments of sadness and loneliness experienced when traveling to foreign cities for various exhibitions, such as Thinking of You(2005) and Bath White I (2005) which were from a series of monoprints drawn directly onto USA Mondrian hotel stationery. Emin has said, "Being an artist isn't just about making nice things, or people patting you on the back; it's some kind of communication, a message."

In 2009, along with book publisher RCS MediaGroup, Emin released a book titled One Thousand Drawings. As the title suggests, the book contains 1,000 drawings from Emin's career since 1988. The book's release coincided with Emin's show Those who suffer love at White Cube. Emin said in an interview that "We actually looked at about 2,000 drawings and then chose 1,000 drawings... I'd probably done, over that period of time about 4,000 drawings".

Monoprint drawings of mothers and children that Emin drew during a pregnancy in 1990 were included in a 2010 joint exhibition with Paula Rego and Mat Collishaw at the Foundling Museum.

Rarely exhibited examples of monoprints gifted to friends and family of Emin form a niche but revealing body of work. Emin has gifted monoprints to individuals including her brother Paul Emin and the singer Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) with whom she shares Cypriot heritage.

In May 2005, London's Evening Standard newspaper highlighted Emin's return to painting in their preview of her When I Think About Sex exhibition at White Cube. Emin was quoted as saying, "For this show I wanted to show that I can really draw, and I think they are really sexy drawings." The bare truth about Tracey , ThisisLondon.co.uk. Retrieved 10 May 2016.

Work for her 2007 show at the Venice Biennale included large-scale canvases of her legs and vagina. A watercolour series called The Purple Virgins were displayed. There are ten Purple Virgin works in total, six of which were shown at the Biennale. These were accompanied by two canvases of a similar style called How I Think I Feel 1 and 2. The Venice Biennale was also the first time Emin's Abortion Watercolour series, painted in 1990, had ever been shown in public.

Jay Jopling presented a new Emin painting, Rose Virgin (2007), as part of White Cube's stand at the Frieze Art Fair in London's Regent's Park on 10 October 2007, with more new paintings shown in Emin's You Left Me Breathing exhibition in Los Angeles' Gagosian gallery from 2 November 2007, described in an interview as an 'exhibition of sculpture and painting'. A number of new paintings were on display including Get Ready for the Fuck of Your Life (2007).

An article by art critic Alastair Sooke published in The Daily Telegraph in 2014 discussed Emin's change of direction from conceptual pieces to painting and sculpture. Sooke claimed that although Emin was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy in 2011, she had been taking drawing lessons privately for some years in New York, and that she had also been taking sculpture lessons for at least three years. Neither Emin or Jay Jopling have commented on the article.

Other photographic works include a series of nine images comprising the work Naked Photos – Life Model Goes Mad(1996) documenting a painting performance Emin made in a room specially built in Galleri Andreas Brändström in Stockholm, Sweden. Another photographic series, Trying on Clothes From My Friends (She Took The Shirt Off His Back)(1997), shows the artist trying on her friends' clothes.

Other works such as I've Got It All (2000) show Emin with her "legs splayed on a red floor, clutching banknotes and coins to her crotch. Made at a time of public and financial success, the image connects the artist's desire for money and success and her sexual desire (her role as consumer) with her use of her body and her emotional life to produce her art (the object of consumption)", while Sometimes I Feel Beautiful (2000) pictures Emin lying alone in a bath. Both these works are examples of her using "large-scale photographs of herself to record and express moments of emotional significance in her life, frequently making reference to her career as an artist. The photographs have a staged quality, as though the artist is enacting a private ritual."

Emin's two self-portraits taken inside her beach hut, The Last Thing I Said To You Is Don't Leave Me Here I (2000) and The Last Thing I Said To You Is Don't Leave Me Here II (2000) are a diptych, although they are often exhibited and sold separately. They depict a naked Emin on her knees inside her beach hut which she and friend Sarah Lucas had bought in Whitstable, Kent in 1992.

The hut itself later became the sculpture The Last Thing I Said To You Is Don't Leave Me Here (The Hut) (1999). They are part of museum collections including Tate Modern, the Saatchi Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery and have been mass produced as postcards sold in museum shops around the world.

For the Venice Biennale, she produced a series of new purple neon works, for example, Legs I (2007). This 2007 series of Legs neon works were directly inspired by the Purple Virgin (2004) watercolour series. For example, Legs IV (2007) directly follows the watercolour lines of the Purple Virgin 9 (2004). For a joint 2010 exhibition with Paula Rego and Mat Collishaw, she decorated the front of the Foundling Museum with the neon words "Foundlings and fledglings are angels of this earth".

Emin has donated neon work to auction for charity. In 2007, her neon Keep Me Safe piece reached the highest price ever made for one of her neon works, selling for over £60,000. A brand new neon piece called With You I Want To Live was shown as part of Emin's You Left Me Breathing exhibition in 2007 at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. The image of the neon is being used in publicity surrounding the forthcoming exhibition of new Emin work , gagosian.com, November 2007. Retrieved 6 May 2016.

In 2018, Emin's largest neon work was displayed at London St Pancras Station, the work called I Want My Time With You hangs below the large central clock in the station. In an interview with The Guardian, Emin stated that the work was a message to the rest of Europe during the Brexit crisis. Passengers disembarking Eurostar from Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam arrive at the station every day underneath the work.

Emin's use of fabric is diverse. One of her most famous works came from sewing letters onto her grandmother's armchair in There's A Lot of Money in Chairs (1994). The chair was very detailed, "including her and her twin brother's names, the year of her grandmother's birth (1901) and the year of her death (1963) on either side of the words 'another world,' referring to the passing of time. An exchange between the artist and her grandmother using the nicknames they had for each other: Ok Puddin, Thanks Plum, covers the bottom front of the chair and a saying of Emin's grandmother's, "There's a lot of money in chairs", is appliquéd in pink along the top and front of its back. Behind the chair back, the first page of Exploration of the Soul, handwritten onto fabric, is appliquéd together with other dictums such as, "It's not what you inherit. It's what you do with your inheritance".

Emin used the chair on a trip she made to the United States in 1994, driving from San Francisco to New York stopping off along the way to give readings from her book, Exploration of the Soul (1994). Emin gave her readings sitting in the upholstered chair and "as she crossed the United States, the artist sewed the names of the places she visited – San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Monument Valley, Detroit, Pittsburgh, New York – onto the front of the chair". Emin also posed in the chair for two of her photographic works (see Photography) while in Monument Valley, in the Arizona Desert. It was on public display at Pallant House Gallery until 6 March 2011 as part of the exhibition, 'Contemporary Eye: Crossovers.'

Emin has made a large number of smaller-scale works, often including hand sewn words and images, such as Falling Stars (2001), It Could Have Been Something (2001), Always Sorry (2005) and As Always (2005).Lehmann Maupin Gallery, I Can Feel Your Smile . Retrieved 17 February 2017.

On 13 April 2007, Emin launched a specially designed flag made out of fabric with the message One Secret Is To Save Everything written in orange-red letters across the banner made up of hand-sewn swimming sperm. Emin's flag, sized 21 feet by 14 feet, flew above the Jubilee Gardens in the British capital until 31 July 2007, with the parliament building and the London Eye as backdrops. Emin called the artwork "a flag made from wishful thinking". The flag was commissioned by the South Bank Centre in London's Waterloo.

In June 2007, on returning from the Venice Biennale, Emin donated a piece of artwork, a handsewn blanket called Star Trek Voyager to be auctioned at Elton John's annual glamorous White Tie & Tiara Ball to raise money for The Elton John AIDS Foundation. The piece of artwork sold for £800,000.Alexander, Hilary. "White tie and tiara ball" . telegraph.co.uk, June 2006. Retrieved 25 February 2008.

Emin's works on fabric has been related to other artists such as Louise Bourgeois, who Emin has also mentioned in a sewn work titled The Older Woman (2005) with a monoprint on fabric phrase, "I think my Dad should have gone out with someone older like Louise, Louise Bourgeois" applied. Tracey Emin profile , lehmannmaupin.com. Retrieved 6 May 2016. She was interviewed by Alan Yentob during the BBC's 2007 Imagine documentary Spiderwoman about Louise Bourgeois. "Episode Guide: Louise Bourgeois, Spiderwoman" , BBC, November 2007. Retrieved 25 February 2008.

In September 2008, she unveiled a neon work that was installed in the well of the cathedral in Liverpool Cathedral. Emin herself says of her continuing relationship of making public sculptures in the town, "When Liverpool is Capital of Culture in 2008, I'll be making a large work for the Anglican Cathedral, which I'm really looking forward to."

Other sculptures include Death mask (2002) which is a bronze cast of her own head. Emin loaned this work to the National Portrait Gallery in 2005.

At Emin's 2007 Venice Biennale exhibition, and the central exhibition's Tower sculptures, tall wooden towers consisting of small pieces of timber piled together, and a new small bronze-cast sculpture work of a child's pink sock was revealed Sock(2007) on display on the steps of the British Pavilion. Sock (image) , britishcouncil-venice.org. Retrieved 10 May 2016. Her exhibition again attracted widespread UK media coverage, both positive and negative.

In September 2007, Emin announced she would be exhibiting new sculpture work in the inaugural Folkestone Triennial, which took place in the Kent town from June to September 2008. At the start of the exhibition's run, Emin discussed the Folkestone sculptures, stating the "high percentage" of teenage pregnancies in the Kent town had inspired this latest work. Emin said, "I'm going to be making very tiny bronze-cast items of baby clothing. It's baby clothes that I have found in the street, like a mitten or a sock." She placed several of the pieces made around the town.(25 September 2007). Emin joins major new art festival. BBC News. Retrieved 12 May 2020.

Emin's 2007 solo show at Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles' Beverly Hills included brand new sculpture works described by Emin as, "some very strange little sculptures. They are nearly all of animals, apart from one, which is a pineapple. They rest on mini-plinths made in a really brilliant LA, beach, California, Fifties surfer kind of style. Different woods put together in cute pattern formations. In some places the wood is 18th-century floorboards, some bits of cabin from tall ships or things which could have been found on the seashore – driftwood." Comment taken from Tracey Emin's column for the Independent newspaper , 3 August 2007. The New York Times included Emin in a piece about artists who are "Originals", with a new photograph with two sculptures, one of a small bird on a thin stand and a large seagull, both sculptures placed on wooden plinths. Gagosian further described the many different sculptures from the show as, "a group of delicate wood and jesmonite sculptures, which expand on the spirals, rollercoasters, and bridges of recent years. Others incorporate cast bronze figures – seagulls, songbirds, and frogs – or objects combining cement and glass, which are placed on tables or bundled bases made from found timbers."" Tracey Emin" , Gagosian.com. Retrieved 6 May 2016.

In late November 2007, it was announced that Emin was one of six artists to have been shortlisted to propose a sculpture for the fourth plinth in London's Trafalgar Square. The other shortlisted artists were Jeremy Deller, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Yinka Shonibare, and Bob and Roberta Smith (pseudonym used by Patrick Brill).

The contenders were commissioned to produce a scale model of their idea. On 6 January 2008, it was revealed Emin's proposal was a lifesize model of a group of four , the desert mammal entitled Something for the Future.Brown, Mark. "Artists vie for Trafalgar plinth commission", The Guardian. The meerkats were labeled "as a symbol of unity and safety..." as "whenever Britain is in crisis or, as a nation, is experiencing sadness and loss (for example, after Princess Diana's funeral), the next programme on television is 'Meerkats United.'" The successful proposal were announced in 2008 as Gormley, whose project One & Other occupied the plinth in summer 2009 and Shonibare, whose work Nelson's Ship in a Bottle was unveiled in 2010..

A project commissioned by Oslo Municipality Art Programme, is a 7-metre-tall bronze sculpture, The Mother. It was unveiled on Museum Island, outside the new Munch Museum in 2020. (http://www.themuseumisland.com/). From the jury's assessment: 'With its immediate and visceral artistic approach it appears both intimate and majestic, vulnerable and grandiose. The title The Mother refers to a mature protector and the sculpture brings to mind the ubiquitous motifs of women and the nude in Munch's work. As a non‐idealised depiction of a woman made by a woman it can also be seen as a feminist statement.'

• Quiet Lives (1982), featuring Emin and boyfriend Billy Childish Quiet Lives (1982), 11 mins, 16 mm, written and directed by Eugene Doyen.—once available with Cheated and Room for Rent in A Hangman Triple Bill (also known as The Hangman Trilogy).Hangman Books. Quiet Lives is discussed in an article on Childish's films in No Focus: Punk on Film (Headpress, 2006).
• Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995) is a single-screen projection with sound, shot on Super 8. Duration: 6 minutes, 40 seconds.
  (2026). 9780500283851, Thames and Hudson. ISBN 9780500283851
  It was made in an edition of 10 and an edited transcript has been published by Tate.
  (2026). 9781854375421, Tate Publishing. ISBN 9781854375421
  The film portrays the artist's early adolescence in Margate, where she grew up. The film begins with the title written across a wall, and then features a montage of views which are significant to Emin's past, including her school, the seaside and shops. The artist's voice narrates her story, opening with, "I never liked school / I was always late / In fact I hated it / So at thirteen I left." The video's final scenes show Emin's involvement in a local disco-dancing competition, in an attempt to escape to London to take part in the British Disco Dance Championship 1978. The last two minutes of the film consist of Emin dancing exuberantly around an empty studio with the song You Make Me Feel, by Sylvester along with a voice overed narration of her saying 'Shane, Eddy, Tony, Doug, Richard … this one's for you'.

In the film, Emin describes leaving school at age 13 and spending her time on Margate's Golden Mile, dreaming and having sex. Sex "was something you could just do and it was for free". She was "13, 14" and having sex with men of "19, 20, 25, 26". In the film, the narration states: "It could be good, really something. I remember the first time someone asked me to grab their balls, I remember the power it gave me. But it wasn't always like that; sometimes they'd just cum, and then they'd leave me there, wherever I was, half naked." In the final scenes, the artist performs at a local dance competition and people begin to clap. A gang of men, "most of whom the had sex with at one time or another" began to chant "slag, slag, slag".

In an interview with Melvyn Bragg, Emin commented on the incident: "I don't see why I was such a slag. All I did was sleep with a few people. It's not a crime, I didn't kill anyone."

• How It Feels (1996)
• Tracey Emin's CV Cunt Vernacular (1997), an autobiographical work in which Emin narrates her story from childhood in Margate, through her student years, abortions and destruction of her early work.
• Homage to Edvard Munch and all My Dead Children (1998)
• Sometimes the Dress Is Worth More Money Than the Money (2001). ICA.
• Top Spot (2004), a feature-length non-fiction production mixing DV footage and Super 8 film into a montage. The title, Top Spot, refers to a youth centre/disco in Margate, as well as being an explicit sexual reference.

Emin has described Top Spot as being "about the moment of... understanding that you are walking into an adult world which means sex, which means often violence, which means that you may suddenly have some perspective on your own life that you never had before." Top Spot was given an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification, much to Emin's dismay, as she intended the film for a teenage audience.In the film, the natural beauty of the sea and the sunsets is connected to Margate's manmade pleasures. The film is scored with a selection of 1970s songs that were the soundtrack to the artist's own adolescence. It was shot during the summertime in Margate and London in England, as well as in Egypt.

Emin withdrew the film from general distribution in cinemas after it was rated with an 18 certificate. It was broadcast on BBC3 television in the UK in December 2004, and a DVD of the film was released in 2004.

The Perfect Place to Grow (2001) was a video installation with a set consisting of a wooden birdhouse, a DVD (shot on Super 8), monitor, trestle, plants, and wooden ladder. This installation was exhibited at the Tate Britain in 2004 in their room dedicated to Emin's work, and was previously exhibited at White Cube in 2001. It was dedicated to her father, creating the bird house as "a tiny home for my dad", and Emin thought of the works' title from the idea of "nature and nurture".

Knowing My Enemy (2002) was a large-scale installation created by Emin for her Modern Art Oxford solo show of that year. Consisting of reclaimed wood and steel, Emin created a wooden "look-out" house upon a long, broken, wooden pier. It's Not the Way I Want to Die (2005) was another large-scale installation, part of Emin's 2005 solo show at White Cube. Emin created a large rollercoaster track with reclaimed timber and metal. Displayed in the same show was a smaller installation work called Self Portrait (2005) which consisted of a tin bath, bamboo, wire and neon light. Another related installation Sleeping With You (2005) consisted of painted reclaimed timber and a thin neon light across a dark wall.

• Exploration of the Soul (1994). Limited edition, 200 copies, signed inside, with two original colour photographs, provided in a hand-sewn white cloth bag with the two coloured cloth letters "TE" hand sewn in various colours.

An autobiographical short story covering Emin's conception through her life at age 13. Re-released in 2003, in an edition of 1000 by Counter Editions, though without the photographs and cloth bag.

• —, Brown, Neal; Kent, Sarah & Collings, Matthew (1998). Tracey Emin (London: Jay Jopling/White Cube, 1998); .
• Tracey Emin (2002), Booth-Clibborn.
• The Is Another Place (2002). Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, Limited edition, 2002; .
• Details of Depression (2003). Counter Editions, Cyprus/London, with author appearing as Tracey Karima Emin, limited edition, stamped on back cover. Brought together an ancient Arabic poem and a series of photographs taken around the northern part of Cyprus.
• Strangeland (2005). London: Scepter5. . Emin's memoir, divided into three sections ("Motherland", "Fatherland" and "Traceyland"), written in the first person, and conveying her life from childhood. Jeanette Winterson wrote: "Her latest writings are painfully honest, and certainly some of it should have been edited out by someone who loves her." "The Times: Books: Tracey Emin" , jeanettewinterson.com. Retrieved 28 March 2006. Emin's editor for Strangeland was the British novelist Nicholas Blincoe. This book also attracted considerable media coverage, and Billy Childish publicly questioned some of its accounts in newspaper articles.
• I Can Feel Your Smile (2005). New York: Lehmann Maupin.
• Tracey Emin: Works 1963 – 2006 (2006). London: Rizzoli. .
• Borrowed Light: the British Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2007 (2007). London: British Council. .
• You Left Me Breathing (2008), Gagosian.
• One Thousand Drawings (2009), Rizzoli.
• Monoprint Diaries (2009), White Cube.
• Those Who Suffer Love (2009). A selection of Tracey Emin's GQ poems, with accompanying drawings.
• Love Is What You Want (2011). A survey of work from Emin's major show at the Hayward Gallery in London.
• My Life in a Column (2011).

In 2000, Emin was commissioned as part of a scheme throughout London titled Art in Sacred Spaces, to collaborate with children on an artwork at Ecclesbourne Primary School in Islington, north London. Pupils made the piece with her in Emin's style of sewing cut out letters onto a large piece of material. In 2004, the school enquired if Emin would sign the work so that the school could sell it as an original to raise funds. They planned to auction the piece for £35,000 for an arts unit," Emin wants school quilt returned", BBC, 30 March 2004. Retrieved 25 February 2008. as it could not afford to display the large work. Emin and her gallery White Cube refused, saying that it was not a piece of her art, therefore reducing its value, and requested it be returned. But Emin quickly came to an agreement with the school, where she paid £4,000 to create a perspex display box for the patchwork quilt to be showcased. Taking as her theme the title "Tell me something beautiful", Emin invited eight-year-olds to nominate their ideas of beauty and then to sew the keywords in felt letters on bright fabric squares. The resulting bold patchwork featured words such as "tree", "sunrise", "dolphin" and "nan".

Art critic John Slyce, who has worked on school collaborations with artists, supported Emin and White Cube's decision saying, "This is a horrific precedent for the school to try to set. They were lucky to have an artist of that stature spending that amount of time with them ... the artwork should remain in context with the kids. Children's primary experience of art should not be as a commodity."

In response to the question "Does she think society sufficiently value women artists?" Emin answered, "No. Of course not. But it's changing slowly. We probably just need another 200 years."

Emin does not overtly appear as a feminist artist, nor does she believe so herself. In an interview with Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Emin stated that she is a feminist, but not a feminist artist.

Emin discusses sexism from the viewpoint of the being a female victim. Though Emin's subversion of feminine stereotypes, Sophie Lloyd describes her work as "…embodying a change in perception of female sexuality that was in line with third-wave feminism, with women defining beauty and sexuality on their own terms." By narrating such harrowed and tortured memories, Emin uses vulnerability to tell not only her own struggles, but the struggles that many women may face while finding themselves.

Emin openly discusses her 1998 installation My Bed for audiences and interviewers alike. She has said, "By realizing how separate I was from it, I separated myself from the bed. I wasn't there any more." This notion of a female using the domestic space and then removing herself from the environment, thus confronting stereotypes and taboos in a confessional work was a controversial event. Feminists critics have described Emin as using the historical notion of the bedroom and its importance for female experiences, as a site for crude intervention.

John Molyneux explains in his article Emin Matters, that her work revolves around class, sex and art itself. He writes, "What she does do is present herself as culturally working class…She makes no attempt to engage in 'intellectual art speak' but sticks to unaffected everyday language," employing a strategy that doesn't place her in authority over her viewers or peers. However, her class background contradicts this tactic of equal understanding. Emin's mother until age seven owned a hotel in Margate, but bankruptcy and poverty ensued only when she broke up with Emin's father. While she may use street language, swear words, grammatical errors and misspellings to convey a primarily middle-class experience, Emin now functions as a boss of her own art business and exists within the elite upper class. Her relationship with sex is a major theme and aspect of her work. Feminist writers have reviewed Emin's pieces as containing, "…no element of eroticism or titillation…unlike in Botticelli, Renoir or Klimt. Nor is it sexual fantasy or dreams, as we might find in surrealism, or the sex of the brothel featured so heavily in late 19th-century French art. It is real, everyday sex—as experienced by her, of course, but also by millions of other people".