My culture picks: Tracey Emin

7 November 2017

With a new retrospective Tracey Emin: Works 2007-2017 having just been published, the contemporary artist famous for My Bed and Everyone I've Ever Slept With 1963-1995 talks to Front Row about the culture that is currently inspiring her.

The BBC One drama series, written by Mike Bartlett, stars Suranne Jones as Dr Gemma Foster, whose life begins to unravel as she investigates whether her husband is having an affair.

Emin says: "It was so brilliant, and shocking as well. I saw the first one by chance, and I was thinking, ‘Well this is a bit dull and a bit sort of strange, and a bit weird,’ and then I started really listening and watching it, and saw how dark it was."

However, she was far less happy with the second series: "How do you destroy something brilliant? Do a second series - that’s what lots of creative people do, they do another one, do another one, do another one. Stop. Just do something completely fresh and completely new."

Suranne Jones spoke to Front Row about series two of Doctor Foster. Series one and two have been released on DVD and Blu-ray by 2entertain.

Gary Indiana's first novel is a story of romantic obsession during the Aids crisis, set in the gay artistic subculture of New York's East Village in the 1980s.

Emin says: "It’s a really sort of mucked up love affair/relationship - the dialogue’s intense and it’s very myopic. You actually feel quite suffocated from reading it.

"It also has one of the best endings of a book that I've ever read. It’s very simple, very easy and it's complete in just a few sentences. Anyone who might be sort of some kind of masochist should read it."

Horse Crazy is published by Paladin (1989).

The 1892 play by Henrik Ibsen tells the story of a self-made man whose life is complicated by the return of a young woman from his past. The Old Vic production starred Ralph Fiennes in the lead role.

Emin says: "This was the last play I saw, at The Old Vic, and it was absolutely fantastic - the sets, everything."

She did admit that in general she rarely sees films or plays because she struggles to stay awake through them, but on this occasion she had a special way to avoid drifting off: "I actually went with Val Kilmer, and Val had to keep prodding me and waking me up all the way through. And he actually took me for a walk around the block so I would get some oxygen, but it was amazing."

David Hare's adaptation of The Master Builder ran from 23 Jan - 19 Mar 2016 at the Old Vic in London. Image by Robbie Jack/Corbis via Getty Images.

An American painter of Russian Jewish descent, Rothko (1903-1970) is generally identified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself refused to adhere to any art movement.

Although Emin lists Edvard Munch as her favourite artist, she notes that Rothko was the artist whose work really resonated with her on her first visit to the Tate Gallery.

She says: "I was walking through the Tate, and I came across this pink and yellow abstract thing, sat down, and cried. Because it resonated, because I felt it; and I think you should feel from the art, it shouldn’t just be what you are looking at, you have to feel something.

"I was 22 - I didn’t know why I was sitting in front of this painting crying, I had no idea. And then I read about Mark Rothko and I totally understood. I also really like his early works, his figurative works. It makes lots of sense why I should love this painting."

Emin also praised contemporary artists Georg Baselitz and Rebecca Warren: "I like things that are really touched, that are really felt, that are really emotional, and I like people like that as well."

A selection of Rothko's work is currently on display at the Tate Modern. Image by Kate Rothko/Apic/Getty Images.