Tracey Emin's Four Million Dollar Bed Says Something About Our Values Though I'm Not Sure What

"Tracey Emin's provocative 1998 installation "My Bed," which depicts underwear stained with menstrual blood, alcohol containers and a used condom, sold in London for 2.5 million pounds (about $4.3 million) on Tuesday as part of a Christie's auction of contemporary art that brought in a total of $170.5 million." ~ L.A. Times

Among my first thoughts when I read the news of "The Bed" fetching more than four million dollars was of how paltry the sums are for artifacts of music industry celebrities. Dylan's lyrics to Like a Rolling Stone only garnered two million dollars, and Elvis's peacock suit barely more than a half million in a recent Sotheby's auction.

In the same auction a Francis Bacon painting sold for near 20 million dollars and the day before Bacon's tryptich of George Dyer sold for about 45 million.

The seller of The Bed was Charles Saatchi, Baghdad-born co-founder of Saatchi & Saatchi, a major league ad agency with thousands of employees and offices in 76 countries. Charles, a longtime art collector, purchased The Bed for just over a quarter million dollars. His purchase provided a sixteen-fold return-on-investment.

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Tracey Emin was born in 1963. She became part of a group called the Young British Artists. In 1999 The Bed was on the short list of selections for The Turner Prize, which is awarded each year to a contemporary artist. In 1997 she gained recognition for a tent which was titled "Everyone I Have Ever Slept With." In addition to all the men with whom she'd been intimate the piece also listed siblings and cousins she slept with when they were kids growing up, as well as the two pre-children she aborted.

Emin, who is not yet a household name in the U.S., is evidently an eminent artist as she was selected to represent Britain in the 2007 Venice Bienniale.

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Yesterday I was talking with a college art instructor and brought up The Bed. Her visceral response was disappointment, that it seemed like something a college sophomore would do. Is this serious art? Is Emin making a statement about our times?

What she says is that this was her bed. The used condom (or condoms, depending on which article source material you draw from), the booze, the stains, the mess... this is our lens into who she was and is. Does she represent a prototype Western female? Or is the work praised because it represents the postmodern deconstruction of Western values?

Oh well. 

Venice Biennale Is a Wonder

"To grow in learning, to open up to the world, seems truly to be finding those to whom we are akin."  --Andre Gide, Concerning Influence In Literature 

From the first of June till 24 November the 55th International Art Exhibition has been taking place at the Giardini and at the Arsenale, as well as in other various Venetian venues. The artistic director of this year's international exhibition is Massimiliano Gioni, a curator and contemporary art critic from New York City.

The scale of this event is mind-boggling, with as many as pavilions representing as many a 90 countries including the Holy See. (Full list here.) Each pavilion showcases a selected artist or group of artists and this year's U.S.A. selection is Sarah Sze. [EdNote: I love how you can Google an artist's name, click on the Images tab and see what kind of work they do. Any time you read about an artist you are unfamiliar with you should try this trick.] 158 artists in all have been enlisted to make this year's event happen.

One has to admire the people who create and manage an event of this scale, especially the creative director Gioni. He wasn't just selected by happenstance, however. He's been co-director of other major events including the Berlin Biennial and this Venice event in 2003. In other words, this isn't his first rodeo.

The setting alone that houses this event is a dream and quite a bit more spacious than the one meter square gallery Gioni opened in Chelsea when he was 29. (You read that correctly: one meter square.)

The theme for the Biennale is based on artist Marino Auriti's Encyclopedic Palace, which was intended to be "the center for all man's knowledge," a museum to house all mankind's greatest achievements. In a NY Times story called Ripples of Rumination Gioni spoke of "the impossibility of capturing the sheer enormity of the art world today."

This is certainly true. As big as this show has been, it's still like a faraway star on a distant galaxy for most Americans, even those who follow the arts in their own constellations and communities here.

For more information, read Carol Vogel's NY Times story, "A New Guide In Venice."

Can't make it to Venice before the end of November? There's plenty to see here, in whatever city you find yourself in. If you're in the Twin Ports,  I recommend Tuesday evening's upcoming opening for Blood Memoirs, curated by  Amber-Dawn Bear Robe at the Tweed. You're also invited to the third annual Goin' Postal Fall Art Show in Superior on Friday evening the 25th. I myself have quite a bit of work here in what feels like my home gallery. I'd love to share it with you. 

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Engage it!

Art Stuff Both Here and Abroad

We have friends who were guests of a woman in France for part of a summer, and at one point after they had been there a while she asked, "What is this word stuff that you use? I do not understand it." She said they don't have a word quite like it in French. Our friends explained that it was a versatile word that you could use to refer to almost anything when you couldn't find a better word. She contemplated this notion a bit and finally smiled broadly, saying, "I really like this word."

All this to say that there is a lot of stuff happening here in the Twin Ports arts scene.

Today, for example, Art in the Alley is celebrating it's fifth birthday. I saw two different times for slated so maybe it is at two and maybe from four to six. Since they're having food and beverages, I am guessing the latter time, though there's a ribbon cutting planner. They have a great art space in Downtown Duluth and if you've never been there then you really should check it out. (Note: Free Blackwater martinis when you buy $25 worth of art today!)

Tonight at Beaner's Central in West Duluth there will be an open mic poetry event hosted by Tina Higgins. These are great places to share your work in a supportive environment. 7:00 - 9:00 pm.

This past Tuesday after work I attended an art talk hosted by Anne Dugan of the Duluth Art Institute. Because it was under-promoted it was also under-attended, but I'd put it on my calendar as soon as I heard about it and went because I really liked the idea of talking about art with people who know more than I about these things. Annie came to share information about the Venice Biennale, a.k.a. 55th International Art Exhibition.

I found it utterly fascinating, as the Biennale has been like a World's Fair of art for more than 100 years, taking place every other year with great enormity. Just like the New York World's Fair that I attended as a youth, countries from all over the world each have their own pavilion to display the works of an artist or group of artists from their nation. What astonished me is how large this is and that I'd never heard of it. Or if I had, it never registered somehow.

My guess is that I read about it in ArtForum magazine when I was an art student but it was just some far off and far away at the time. Annie brought it close to home with details about the curator Massimiliano Gioni who selected the theme for this year's event -- Il Palazzo Enciclopedico / The Encyclopedic Palace -- based on a document by Jung.

It's my hope to share more of what Annie shared in another blog entry, but I will tease you with this. What do Edward Hopper, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Ben Shahn, Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Morris Louis, Robert Rauschenburg, Franz Kline, Louise Nevelson, Jim Dine and Hans Hofmann all have in common? Each of them had been sent as artists to represent the U.S. in the Venice Biennale at one time or another.

Last week I missed a really good meeting of the Twin Ports Arts Align at Pizza Luce. How do I know it was good? Because Crystal Pelkey took very good notes and shared them on the Twin Ports Arts Align Facebook page. In addition to Crystal, who moderated, those in attendance included Susanna Gaunt, Bill Payne, Mark Harvey, Richard Hansen, Mary Matthews, Sam Black, Cal Metts, Helen Smith Stone, Chani Ninneman, and Shane Bauer.

Bill Payne reviewed the history of Twin Ports Arts Align, including the two major January gatherings we’ve had, and our first project North x North last May.

He reminded us that the Twin Ports Arts Align is not an organization; we are a conversation that has been going on for two years. It is my opinion that the social media component alone has proved invaluable, though the group has achieved some rather important things beyond the sharing of ideas. The focus of this meeting revolved around the future of Twin Ports Arts Align and what that will look like.

Mary Matthews, represented the Duluth Public Arts Commission (PAC) and gave an update to the group of Twin Ports Arts Align (TPAA) which you can read on the TPAA Facebook page cited above.

The members of the group discussed various points and addressed questions that were posed such as these:

Question posed: Is it possible for the PAC to sponsor a gathering of arts issues/public art in January similar to how the UMD School of Fine Arts brought together the arts community for the past two years?

Discussion point: We discussed the importance of having a common vision. Richard discussed the NxN project and perhaps we didn’t reach that vision and that was part of the problem of that initial effort Helen mentioned the importance of talking about the same thing, having the same goals/vision and having an advocate to keep the conversation moving forward.

Question: Does a model exist out there where the Public Arts Commission and an Arts Align group could combine?

Question: Is the Twin Cities Springboard for the Arts a good model to look at? In the Twin Cities artists are integrated into the administration of the city.

Question: Where do our citizens see themselves in relation to the arts? Do they see it as an important part of their lives? Can we pose a survey to non-artists and pose that question to the community and enlist Visit Duluth?

Question: What are our measurements of success going to be? Minneapolis publishes a creative index, and distributes a booklet annually documenting the impact of the creative community.

Question: What statistics/data already exist in terms of the impact of the arts in our region?

Discussion point: This past January, 5 working groups met and created action steps. That model worked really well to keep things moving forward

Discussion point: Is the Greater Downtown Council a model to look at for TPAA? Members pay dues for their specific services—research, advocacy. Action step: Research the GDTC model and investigate how they became successful.


In short, there is a lot of seriously good thought behind what is happening in the local, and global, arts scene. It doesn't "just happen." It's fascinating to watch the fermentation of ideas, especially when the outcome can be the betterment of our communities.

Go team!