You can tell things are getting bad when I mention Tracey Emin twice in one week. On Sunday I commented on her whine about not winning the Turner prize, but that hasn't held her back as the Times (UK) reports in Tracey Emin, the Tate and an invisible Christmas tree:
You commission Tracey Emin to create the Tate’s Christmas tree, and what do you get? Well, you certainly don’t get a tree; you get an empty space. It’s art, my dear.One of her earlier works expresses my take.
Emin, famous for her messy bed, was asked to provide the seasonal decoration for the rotunda at Tate Britain on Millbank. She ordered a tree all right, a real one, but she sent it to Lighthouse West London, an HIV and Aids charity.
From tomorrow, visitors to the Tate will find, instead of a festive fir, an Emin canvas with a message inviting them to leave their name and address, and a donation to Lighthouse. She will draw a name from a hat next year, and the winning donor will receive an original Emin artwork. It might be worth having: her works sell for up to £95,000.
The Tate yesterday strenuously denied any suggestion of disappointment at its lack of a real tree and suggested that, had Emin provided them with a standard Norway spruce, complete with needles, lights and fairy, it would have belied a serious lack of imagination on the part of one of our cutting-edge artists.
"We don’t expect a normal tree," a spokesman said. "We know that artists will create a different take on the idea; that’s the whole point."
