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On Tracey Emin and Louise Bourgeois

'The Guardian' newspaper has an article on its arts page about a show of collaborative works between Tracey Emin and Louise Bourgeois. Only yesterday, I posted my latest web-talk about the late Ms. Bourgeois, so this is an interesting coincidence.

My opinion of Tracey Emin has always been extremely low, and my opinion of Bourgeois extremely high. My reaction to Emin's work was already formed when my etching teacher in London, who worked on some prints with Emin, told me some very unflattering anecdotes about Emin which cast aspersions on, shall we say, her intellectual capacity. I made the mistake of recounting this story in full on someone's Facebook page recently, which earned me a perhaps deserved rebuke for being impolite.

But Jonathan Jones, who wrote 'The Guardian' article, has exactly the opposite opinion. He responds positively to Emin, and Bourgeois leaves him cold. And I have to say, if Bourgeois thought Emin worthy of being in the same room as her, maybe I should go back and look at la Emin's work and see if I can get beyond my belief that it's as if someone decided that, instead of going to drama school, learning the lines of 'Hamlet', and giving a considered portrayal of the character, they had decided instead just to walk onstage without any prior rehearsal or even acting experience, and just stood there screaming at the top of their voice:

'I HAD A TERRIBLE CHILDHOOD!!'

But then again, maybe I'm wrong.

You decide. Here's a couple of the collaborative pieces by the two artists:





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