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One Fine Show: “Tracey Emin, A Second Life” at Tate Modern in London

This comprehensive, extremely personal survey gathers four decades of work, from tiny photographs of destroyed art-school paintings through Emin's recent canvases and bronzes, shown here for the first time.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dame Tracey Emin back in 2013, when I was a cub reporter with this outlet. The occasion would have been a gallery show, the motivator a pushy PR motivated to help sell the bronzes, neons and drippy body-oriented paintings that had recently come to define her mid-career output. I didn’t know much about her work beyond My Bed (1998), but my admiration for it was enough to make me want to talk to her. This was peak Tumblr era and I couldn’t believe someone could make something so personal and without affectation. She cocked an eyebrow at me when I sat down at our table in the restaurant at the Standard under the High Line. “I’m a much healthier influence, say, than Sylvia Plath,” she told me, of her legacy. “I am alive.”

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