Tracey Emin
Blue-chipEgon research · Artist market profile
The market, in context.
Explore Tracey Emin’s auction history alongside the exhibitions, collections and gallery relationships behind the market.
Institutional research
Collections & exhibitions
Read holdings, exhibition history and their qualifications in context.
Read the institutional research →
Egon investment scores
Market position
Research updated
Auction record context
My Bed (1998) - £2.5m at Christie's London, Post-War & Contemporary Art evening sale, 1 July 2014 (c.$4.3m; MutualArt records $4,365,646). 111.9% above the £1.2m high estimate. Consigned by Charles Saatchi, who had paid c.$200,000 in 2000; bought by Count Christian Duerckheim, who placed it on long-term loan to Tate. STILL THE STANDING RECORD as of August 2026 - twelve years unbeaten.
Auction highlights
Scroll horizontally if needed →
| Work | Result | Venue and date |
|---|---|---|
| I wanted you | $100,279 | Jun 2026 |
| You Forgot to Kiss My Soul | $133,706 | Jun 2026 |
| Sleeping Wishing | $61,178 | Apr 2026 |
2 further auction entries on record for Tracey Emin — inside Egon.
Pricing
Temporal context
- 2014
- Structural break - My Bed at £2.5m establishes a seven-figure ceiling.
- 1993-2000
- Emergence. Hotel International sold 1994; My Bed to Saatchi for c.$200,000 in 2000.
- 2001-2013
- Consolidation. Blankets and neons in the low-to-mid six figures; the installation market thin.
- 2015-2021
- Painting market underdeveloped relative to reputation; most sales $100,000-$500,000.
- 2022-2024
- Re-rating of the painting - Like A Cloud Of Blood £2.3m (Oct 2022); Mad Tracey From Margate $914,400 (May 2024); The Shower £504,000 (Oct 2024).
2025-2026 current
Range $32,000-$1.61m; average hammer c.$469,848 across tracked lots. MutualArt reports a trailing-12-month painting average of c.$332,482 and an installation average of c.$149,615. Volume and estimates lifted materially by the Tate Modern retrospective.
Important caveats
- Figures mix unique works, editioned neons and prints/multiples. The print market (hundreds to low thousands of pounds) is a different asset class from the painting market and must not be blended.
- The primary market is gallery-controlled and prices are largely undisclosed. Contact White Cube (London, Paris, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul) or Xavier Hufkens (Brussels) for current primary pricing.
- The 2014 record is for an installation of unrepeatable art-historical status; it is NOT a proxy for what a typical Emin can achieve.
By work type current 2025 2026
- Neon text works
- $60,000 - $250,000 depending on edition size, scale and phrase
Bronze sculpture
$150,000 - $700,000 for unique or small-edition works; monumental bronzes (The Mother, I Followed You to the End, Ascension) are primary-market, price on application
- Mid size paintings
- $130,000 - $560,000
Prints and multiples
£350 - £15,000 typical. The Childhood print series has averaged c.£1,836 across 12 auction appearances with a range of £350-£4,306 and average annual growth of -2.77%.
- Appliqued blankets 1990s
- $500,000 - $915,000 - scarce and the highest-conviction category after major paintings
- Drawings monotypes gouaches
- $30,000 - $135,000
Major large scale paintings 2018 present
$550,000 - $1.6m+ at auction; primary-market equivalents reported around £1.2m (a Gagosian secondary-market sale of an Emin painting at Frieze New York, May 2025). Christie's / Phillips evening-sale territory.
Liquidity
Depth
A three-tier market: evening-sale paintings and historic installations; day-sale works on paper, blankets and neons; and a very deep print/multiple market.
Volume
Deep and continuous. 42 lots at the four major houses alone in the ~18 months from January 2025, plus a long tail across regional houses (Forum Auctions, Bonhams, William George, Abell, Auctions at Showplace) indexed by LiveAuctioneers. Annualised volume is comfortably above the 20-lot threshold once prints and multiples are counted.
Geography
London is the primary centre (Christie's, Sotheby's, Phillips, Bonhams), with an established New York market and growing Asian interest ahead of the 2027 Hoam Museum tour stop.
- Assessment
- Among the most liquid British contemporary artists. Conversion risk sits at the day-sale and print level rather than at the top of the market.
Comparables
For a 2018-2024 painting at 6-8 ft scale, the operative comparables are I See the Mirror ($553,410, Phillips, Mar 2026) at the mid-point and Like A Cloud Of Blood (£2.3m, Christie's, Oct 2022) as the ceiling. For 1990s blankets, Mad Tracey From Margate ($914,400, Sotheby's, 2024). For neons and works on paper, the $32,000-$135,000 band evidenced across the 2026 day sales.
Collector base
Named
- Charles Saatchi - foundational patron; bought My Bed c.2000, consigned it in 2014
- Count Christian Duerckheim (Duerckheim Collection) - buyer of My Bed in 2014; lender of it to Tate Modern's 2026 retrospective
- The Levett Collection / FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum), France - owns The Last of the Gold (2002)
- A4 Arts Foundation - funded Tate's 2025 purchase of The End of Love (2024)
- Sammlung Goetz, Munich - private collection holding
Profile
UK and European collectors dominate; strong institutional and foundation buying; an unusually broad retail base for prints and multiples driven by mainstream name recognition rare among contemporary artists.
Primary market
White Cube (global) since 1993 and Xavier Hufkens (Brussels) since 2015. Prices on application. White Cube's Paris show was timed to Art Basel Paris 2026 and it installed the monumental bronze The Mother (2017) in its courtyard to coincide with the Tate show. Gagosian trades her work on the secondary market at fairs (a painting at c.£1.2m, Frieze New York, May 2025), indicating dealer-level liquidity well beyond her representing galleries.
Auction history
Record
My Bed (1998) - £2.5m at Christie's London, Post-War & Contemporary Art evening sale, 1 July 2014 (c.$4.3m; MutualArt records $4,365,646). 111.9% above the £1.2m high estimate. Consigned by Charles Saatchi, who had paid c.$200,000 in 2000; bought by Count Christian Duerckheim, who placed it on long-term loan to Tate. STILL THE STANDING RECORD as of August 2026 - twelve years unbeaten.
Second tier records
- Like A Cloud Of Blood (2022) - £2.3m, Christie's London 20th/21st Century Evening Auction, October 2022; more than doubled its estimate. Effectively the painting record and the decisive re-rating of her contemporary painting.
- MutualArt reports a painting high of c.$2,633,752 and a sculpture/installation high of c.$4,365,646.
- Mad Tracey From Margate, Everyone's Been There (1997, appliquéd blanket) - $914,400, Sotheby's New York, May 2024.
- The Shower - £504,000, Christie's Post-War & Contemporary Art Day Sale, October 2024.
- But you never wanted me - offered Sotheby's The Now Evening Auction, New York, 13 May 2024, est. $700,000-1,000,000.
- You are there now - Sotheby's The Now Evening Auction, New York, 19 May 2022, est. $300,000-400,000.
Bought in and weakness
Of 42 lots tracked from 2025, 11 are recorded unsold or unsettled - a real buy-in component. Sleeping Wishing (Phillips, Apr 2026) sold below estimate despite the Tate retrospective being open. Emin's market has historically carried a meaningful buy-in rate at the day-sale and print level, where supply is deep and quality highly variable. Pre-2025 buy-in granularity would require Artnet/Artprice subscription data and could not be verified within the search budget.
Egon database 2025 onward
- Sold
- 31
- Upcoming
- 5
- Recent range
- $32,000 - $1,612,125
- Lots recorded
- 42
Sell through caveat
Not stated by the source: 90% of lots have settled and unsettled lots skew disproportionately toward passes, so any computed rate would be inflated. Treat 31/42 (~74%) as an upper-bound-biased figure, not a clean sell-through rate.
- Recent average hammer
- $469,848
- Highest recorded in window
- $1,612,125
Offered around tate opening 2026
- Spending time with you - Sotheby's London Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction, 4 March 2026, est. £500,000-700,000
- Floating Blue - Sotheby's London Contemporary Day Auction, 5 March 2026, est. £100,000-150,000
- The Kiss Was Beautiful - Sotheby's London Contemporary Day Auction, 5 March 2026, est. £70,000-100,000
Market position
Peer set
Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili, Marc Quinn, Gary Hume (YBA cohort); Cecily Brown, Jenny Saville, Marlene Dumas and the Louise Bourgeois estate (confessional / female-body comparables).
Current catalyst
The Tate Modern retrospective and its four-continent tour (2026-2028) is the largest institutional catalyst of her career, and is already visible in above-estimate day-sale results in mid-2026.
Relative standing
Emin's top end sits materially below Hirst's and below Saville's painting record, and her own record has not moved since 2014. MyArtBroker's 2026 analysis of the gender value gap explicitly contrasts Hirst, framed as a 'market disruptor', with Emin, whose comparably strong commercial record is rarely discussed in commercial terms - the 'personal, confessional, intimate' vocabulary applied to her work is argued to depress collector perception and price ceilings.
Investment outlook
Constructive, with the record risk clearly flagged. POSITIVE: an unprecedented institutional cycle (Tate Modern originating, then Louisiana, Hoam and NGV Melbourne through 2028); a late-career painting body that critics and the market are re-rating in parallel; deep, three-tiered liquidity; scarce supply of 1990s blankets and installations; exceptional mainstream name recognition. NEGATIVE: the headline record is twelve years old and was set by a singular, unrepeatable work; day-sale material shows real dispersion (a Phillips lot below estimate in Apr 2026 alongside above-estimate Christie's lots in Jun 2026); print and multiple supply is very deep and some series (Childhood) show negative annual growth. Base case: continued strengthening of the top-tier painting market through the tour window to 2028, with a meaningful risk of post-retrospective supply overhang and profit-taking in 2028-29.
Institutional presence
Research updated
Exhibitions
Upcoming
- Tate Modern retrospective runs to 31 August 2026, then the four-venue tour through April 2028
- White Cube Paris - new paintings and sculptures, timed to Art Basel Paris 2026
- Galerie Glaab, Bern - from 14 August 2026 (per MutualArt exhibition listings)
- Five Emin lots recorded as upcoming in the Egon auction database
Current flagship
- Dates
- 27 February - 31 August 2026
Scale
Largest-ever survey of Emin's career; over 90 works spanning 40 years; painting, video, textiles, neon, writing, sculpture and installation; canonical works shown alongside never-before-exhibited material
- Title
- Tracey Emin: A Second Life
- Venue
- Tate Modern, London
- Curator
- Maria Balshaw (Director, Tate)
Key inclusions
My Major Retrospective 1982-93 photographs; Tracey Emin CV (1995); Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995); How it feels (1996); a recreation of her beer-can-and-laundry-strewn 1996 studio; My Bed (1998, on loan, deliberately placed in the second half of the show with no wall text); It's Not Me That's Crying It's My Soul (2011); Rape (2018); I Never Asked to Fall in Love - You Made Me Feel Like This (2018); Death Mask (2002); Ascension (2024); the monumental bronze I Followed You to the End (2024) sited on the approach to the building
Curatorial thesis
Charts Emin's lifelong commitment to PAINTING and frames her use of the female body as a vehicle for passion, pain and healing, positioning the recent large-scale paintings as the culmination of her practice rather than a late turn
- Biennial participation
- Venice Biennale 2007 - sole representative of Great Britain, British Pavilion, with 'Borrowed Light'
Significant group shows
- Sensation, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1997 (and Berlin / Brooklyn Museum tour) - the defining YBA exhibition, showing Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995
- Minky Manky, curated by Carl Freedman, 1995 - debut of Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995
- Turner Prize exhibition, Tate, 1999 (shortlisted, with My Bed)
Confirmed international tour
- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark - October 2026 to April 2027
- Hoam Museum of Art, Yongin, South Korea - June/July to November 2027
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia - December 2027 to April 2028
- NOTE: no United States venue has been announced
Major prior solo museum and institutional shows
- Tracey Emin. Sex and Solitude - Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2025 (with the site-specific façade neon Sex and Solitude, 2025)
- Love Is What You Want - Hayward Gallery, London, 2011 (non-collecting kunsthalle)
- Tracey Emin: 20 Years - Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 2008 (first retrospective; toured)
- Borrowed Light - British Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007
- The Last Great Adventure is You - White Cube, London, 2014
- The Memory of your Touch - Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, 2017
- The Line - One Artist Per Time - Dio Horia, Mykonos, 2017
- New Monotypes - Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art, New York, 2016
- Nudes.Blue - Galerie Fluegel-Roncak, Nuremberg, 2015
- My Major Retrospective 1982-93 - White Cube, London, November 1993 (first gallery solo)
Publications
- Tracey Emin: Paintings, Phaidon, 2024 - major monograph
- Strangeland, memoir, 2005
- Tracey Emin: A Second Life, Tate Publishing exhibition catalogue, 2026
- Tracey Emin. Sex and Solitude, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi catalogue, 2025
- Parkett no. 63 artist's edition, 2001
- JSTOR-indexed scholarly literature on the confessional mode in her work
- NO CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ identified as of August 2026 - a genuine gap in the scholarly apparatus
Museum collections
Tate (Tate Modern / Tate Britain), London
Note
IMPORTANT: My Bed (1998) is NOT owned by Tate. It is on long-term loan from the Duerckheim Collection and was lent to the 2026 retrospective. Do not record it as a Tate acquisition.
- Tier
- First-rank
- Holdings
- Multiple works across media
Credit lines verbatim
- 'Tate Purchased with funds provided by A4 Arts Foundation 2025' - The End of Love, 2024 → CURATORIAL PURCHASE (named funding body)
- 'Tate Presented anonymously 1997' - Why I Never Became a Dancer, 1995 → offered and accepted
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Note
MoMA holdings are concentrated in prints and editions rather than major unique works - real presence at a first-rank institution, but shallow in depth.
- Tier
- First-rank
- Holdings
- 19 works online, Drawings & Prints department
Credit lines verbatim
- 'Linda Barth Goldstein Fund. 46.2002' - Self-Portrait 12.11.01 (for Parkett no. 63), 2001 → NAMED FUND = CURATORIAL PURCHASE
- 'Gift of the artists. 18.2012.1' - I Wanted to Love You More, from Do Not Abandon Me (Louise Bourgeois with Tracey Emin), 2009-2010 → artist gift
- 'Gift of the artists. 18.2012.7' - I Held Your Sperm and Cried, from Do Not Abandon Me, 2009-2010 → artist gift
- 'Gift of the artists. 18.2012.14' - Too Much Love, from Do Not Abandon Me, 2009-2010 → artist gift
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
- Tier
- First-rank
- Credit line
- credit line not published in sources consulted
The British Museum, London
- Tier
- First-rank
- Holdings
- Prints and works on paper
- Credit line
- credit line not published in sources consulted
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- Tier
- First-rank US modern/contemporary
- Credit line
- credit line not published in sources consulted
View 10 more records
Brooklyn Museum, including the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
- Tier
- Major encyclopedic US museum
- Credit line
- credit line not published in sources consulted
National Galleries of Scotland (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art), Edinburgh
- Tier
- National collection
- Credit line
- credit line not published in sources consulted
National Gallery of Victoria / The Ian Potter Centre, Melbourne
- Tier
- First-rank Australian
- Credit line
- credit line not published in sources consulted
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
- Tier
- Major contemporary
- Credit line
- credit line not published in sources consulted
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
- Tier
- Regional / major contemporary
- Credit line
- credit line not published in sources consulted
Denver Art Museum
- Tier
- Strong regional US
- Credit line
- credit line not published in sources consulted
Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam
- Tier
- Historic house museum
- Credit line
- credit line not published in sources consulted
National Portrait Gallery, London
- Tier
- First-rank national
- Holdings
- 'The Doors' (2023) - permanent architectural commission, 45 female portraits cast in bronze on the gallery's three new entrance doors
- Credit line
- Commissioned work; credit line not published in sources consulted
Sammlung Goetz, Munich
- Tier
- PRIVATE COLLECTION - not a public museum accession; listed for completeness only
- Credit line
- not applicable
FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum) / The Levett Collection, France
- Tier
- PRIVATE-FOUNDATION MUSEUM - not a first-rank public accession
- Holdings
- The Last of the Gold, 2002 (lent to Tate 2026)
- Credit line
- not applicable
Awards and recognition
- DBE - Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, King's Birthday Honours, June 2024, for services to art (investiture February 2025)
- CBE - Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 2012/2013, for services to the visual arts
- Royal Academician (RA), elected 29 March 2007
- Eranda Professor of Drawing, Royal Academy of Arts, from 2011 - one of only two women professors in the RA's history since its 1768 founding
- Turner Prize shortlist, 1999
- Honorary Doctorate, Royal College of Art, 2007
- BBC Radio 4 - listed among the 100 most powerful women in the UK, 2013
- Founder, Tracey Emin Foundation; founder and sole funder of TKE Studios and the free TEAR residency programme, Margate
Collections data caveat
The museum APIs supplied with this brief returned no works - an API coverage artefact, not an absence. Verbatim credit lines were recoverable only for Tate and MoMA within the search budget. Other holdings are attested via gallery and museum secondary listings without published credit lines and are recorded honestly as 'credit line not published' rather than inferred.
Career & Biography
Research updated
Identity
- Born
- 3 July 1963, Croydon, London, England
- Gender
- Female
- Raised
- Margate, Kent, with twin brother Paul; her father co-owned the Hotel International there
- Full name
- Dame Tracey Karima Emin, DBE RA
- Nationality
- British (English); Turkish-Cypriot paternal heritage
- Current locations
- Lives and works between Margate (Kent, UK), London, and the South of France; principal studio complex TKE Studios, Margate
- Age as of aug 2026
- 63
Education
Scroll horizontally if needed →
| Note | Years | Institution | Degree |
|---|---|---|---|
| Associated with the Medway Poets punk poetry performance group | 1980-82 | Medway College of Design | Not supplied |
| Not supplied | 1983-86 | Maidstone College of Art | BA Printmaking |
| Not supplied | 1987-89 | Royal College of Art, London | MA Painting |
| Not supplied | early 1990s | Birkbeck, University of London | Philosophy (brief, non-completing) |
| Not supplied | 2007 | Royal College of Art | Honorary Doctorate |
Career timeline
- 1989
- MA Painting, RCA. Followed by two traumatic abortions; destroyed all graduate-school work, a period she has called 'emotional suicide'.
1993
Co-founds 'The Shop' in Bethnal Green with Sarah Lucas; opens 'The Tracey Emin Museum'; first White Cube solo exhibition 'My Major Retrospective 1982-93' (Nov 1993), including the blanket Hotel International.
- 1994
- Sells first blanket work (Hotel International); US reading tour.
- 1995
- Makes Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 (the tent) for Carl Freedman's 'Minky Manky'; makes the video Why I Never Became a Dancer.
- 1997
- Included in 'Sensation' (Saatchi collection) at the Royal Academy; notorious live-television appearance cements public profile.
- 1998
- Creates My Bed in her Waterloo flat after a four-day depressive episode.
1999
Turner Prize shortlist (did not win); My Bed shown at Tate; converts her Whitstable beach hut into The Last Thing I Said to You is Don't Leave Me Here.
- 2000
- Charles Saatchi acquires My Bed for a reported c.$200,000.
- 2005
- Publishes memoir 'Strangeland'.
2007
Represents Great Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale with 'Borrowed Light'; elected Royal Academician (29 March 2007); honorary doctorate from the RCA.
- 2008
- First retrospective, 'Tracey Emin: 20 Years', Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (toured).
2011
Appointed Eranda Professor of Drawing, Royal Academy of Arts - one of only two women professors in the RA's history since its 1768 founding; major survey 'Love Is What You Want', Hayward Gallery, London.
2014
My Bed sells at Christie's London for £2.5m - still her auction record; buyer Count Christian Duerckheim, who places it on long-term loan to Tate. Solo 'The Last Great Adventure is You', White Cube London.
- 2015
- Begins decade-long collaboration with Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
- 2017
- Buys a 30,000 sq ft section of the former Thanet Press building, Margate; begins large-scale reinvestment in the town.
2020
Diagnosed with aggressive bladder cancer; major surgery removing bladder and reproductive organs; lives with a stoma. Illness becomes central to subsequent painting.
2021
Opens TKE (Tracey Karima Emin) Studios, Margate - fully self-funded artist studios, exhibition and lecture space - plus the free studio-based TEAR (Tracey Emin Artist Residency) programme; Tracey Emin Foundation established.
- 2023
- National Portrait Gallery commission 'The Doors' - 45 female portraits cast in bronze covering the gallery's three new entrance doors.
- 2024
- Created a Dame (DBE) in the King's Birthday Honours, June 2024, for services to art; Phaidon monograph 'Tracey Emin: Paintings' published.
2025
Investiture as Dame (February 2025). 'Tracey Emin. Sex and Solitude', Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence - largest Italian institutional show to date, with the site-specific façade neon Sex and Solitude (2025). Tate purchases The End of Love (2024).
2026
'Tracey Emin: A Second Life', Tate Modern, 27 Feb - 31 Aug 2026 - largest-ever survey of her career, curated by Tate director Maria Balshaw, 90+ works across 40 years; four-venue international tour announced through 2028. White Cube Paris exhibition of new paintings and sculptures timed to Art Basel Paris.
- 2012-2013
- Appointed CBE for services to the visual arts; named by BBC Radio 4 among the 100 most powerful women in the UK (2013).
Studio practice
Works simultaneously across painting, drawing, monotype/print, appliquéd blankets, neon text, bronze sculpture, film, photography and installation. Since c.2017 the operational centre has been Margate: her own studio plus TKE Studios. Post-2020 practice is dominated by large-scale expressionist painting made under conditions of illness and recovery; the Tate retrospective explicitly positions painting as her lifelong and culminating commitment rather than a late detour.
Political social engagement
Vocal on abuse, sexual violence and women's bodily autonomy. In a 26 February 2026 Art Newspaper interview pegged to the Tate opening she spoke against the rise of Reform UK and on the British Museum's colonial history. Substantial philanthropic and regeneration activity in Margate: TKE Studios, the free TEAR residency, the Tracey Emin Foundation, and purchases of the former Margate Constitutional Club, One Union Crescent and a former Edwardian bathhouse.
Personal events shaping work
Childhood in a declining Margate; rape at 13 and teenage experience of misogyny (narrated in Why I Never Became a Dancer, 1995); two abortions after graduating from the RCA, after which she destroyed all her early paintings; 1990s alcohol dependency and breakdown (the direct source of My Bed); 2020 bladder cancer and radical surgery - the pivot behind the Tate show's title 'A Second Life'.
Artistic context and influences
Note
Egon's fingerprint reading of a 'YBA / Schiele-Matisse autographic line' lineage is corroborated by sources; Munch and Bourgeois should be added as equally important lineages the fingerprint omits.
- Movement
- Young British Artists (YBA) - a core figure alongside Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Marc Quinn and Gillian Wearing
Declared influences
Edvard Munch (long-declared touchstone), Egon Schiele (explicitly cited in relation to her expressionist line and the Childhood prints), Louise Bourgeois (direct collaborator on the 2009-10 print series 'Do Not Abandon Me'), Auguste Rodin, the Matisse lineage of autographic line drawing, feminist body art and confessional writing traditions
Contemporaries and collaborators
Sarah Lucas (The Shop, 1993), Carl Freedman (curator/dealer and early partner, curated 'Minky Manky' 1995), Jay Jopling / White Cube, Louise Bourgeois, Charles Saatchi (patron)
Artistic Profile
Research updated
Style
A deliberately unpolished, autographic first-person visual language. Tremulous single-pass contour drawing that prioritises emotional registration over anatomical accuracy; in painting, agitated black linework flooded with blood-red and bled across bleak white grounds; in text works, her own handwriting rendered in neon or hand-stitched in appliqué. Critics have noted that the 'spiky inarticulacy' of her line conveys trauma more effectively than conventional draughtsmanship could - the roughness is the content, not a shortfall. Her immediacy and often sexually provocative attitude locate the oeuvre within feminist discourse.
Evolution
1993-2000: readymade, textile and video autobiography, deliberately anti-craft, made under conditions of poverty and breakdown. 2001-2017: formal expansion into neon, bronze and monotype; the line becomes the signature and internationalises through Venice 2007 and the Hufkens relationship. 2018-present: the painting turn - larger, more chromatic, more explicitly bodily and mortality-driven. The 2020 cancer diagnosis is the decisive rupture; the Tate retrospective positions the recent paintings as the culmination of the practice rather than a coda to it.
Influences
Edvard Munch (declared, long-standing); Egon Schiele (explicitly cited by critics in relation to the Childhood prints and the expressionist contour); Louise Bourgeois (direct collaboration on Do Not Abandon Me, 2009-10, now in MoMA); the Matisse lineage of autographic line drawing; Rodin; confessional writing and feminist body art.
Visual language
Formal
CONFIRMED: intimate scale, generous negative space, asymmetrical balance, figure-ground tension, flatness, diagonal sprawl, single ink-pooled anchoring masses. EXTEND: at the opposite pole of her output, MONUMENTAL scale - bronzes several metres high sited outdoors and canvases 2-3m wide - entirely absent from the fingerprint's tier-1 exemplars.
Palette
CONFIRMED for works on paper: achromatic, limited, high-key, monochromatic - navy, cobalt and black on cream. EXTEND / DISAGREE: the painting body is dominated by blood-red, bone-white and black, a chromatically violent register that the drawings-weighted fingerprint does not capture at all. Neons add saturated blue, pink and white.
Signature devices
Handwritten text; the single unbroken contour; deliberate 'bad' drawing; needle-sharp embroidered line on soft blanket ground; her own handwriting as neon.
Signature series
My Major Retrospective 1982-93; the blankets (1994- ); Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 (1995); the Margate videos (1995-96); My Bed (1998); Borrowed Light (Venice, 2007); Do Not Abandon Me with Louise Bourgeois (2009-10); the Childhood prints; the neon text works; The Doors (2023); the post-illness paintings (2018-2026).
Themes and subjects
Extended
Sexual violence and abuse; abortion, miscarriage and reproductive loss; alcohol, breakdown and recovery; Margate, class and childhood; love, desire and abandonment; and since 2020 cancer, surgery, mortality and survival - the 'second life' framing. The female body is the vehicle for all of these rather than a subject in itself.
- Text as subject
- Handwritten confessional text is both a theme and a formal device - lists, declarations, accusations and endearments in her own hand.
Self representation
Nearly all figures are self-representations. The reclining female nude with eyes closed and body splayed recurs as her core motif - lived female embodiment set against idealised objecthood.
- Confirmed by fingerprint
- Intimacy; the body; identity; the psychological; the gaze; solitude; tenderness; introspection
Movements and periods
- Primary
- Young British Artists (YBA); Contemporary (1990s-present)
- Affiliations
- Confessional art; feminist body art; Neo-Expressionism (in the post-2018 painting); readymade and installation art (1990s)
Period brackets
1993-2000 YBA emergence (readymade, textile, video); 2001-2017 formal expansion (neon, bronze, monotype, international consolidation); 2018-present the painting turn, intensified after the 2020 illness
- Fingerprint confirmation
- Egon's tags YBA / Representational / Expressionist / Gestural / Contemporary / 2010-present are all corroborated by sources.
Techniques and mediums
Confirmed by fingerprint
Drawing; monotype; print; cast plaster multiples with found materials (hairpins); navy and cobalt brushed-ink contour on cream wove paper; intimate-scale boxed editions
Additional not in fingerprint
- LARGE-SCALE OIL PAINTING - the single biggest omission from the fingerprint. Since 2018 this is her dominant medium and her highest-value category: large gestural canvases in red, white and black. Rape (2018), I Never Asked to Fall in Love (2018), Like A Cloud Of Blood (2022), The End of Love (2024).
- APPLIQUÉD BLANKETS - hand-stitched text-and-image wool blankets, built up in layers 'more like a painting'. Emin insists on the word 'blankets', not 'quilts'. Hotel International (1994), Mad Tracey From Margate (1997), Is This a Joke (2009).
- NEON TEXT - her own handwriting in coloured neon. It's Not Me That's Crying It's My Soul (2011); the site-specific Sex and Solitude (2025) on the Palazzo Strozzi façade.
- MONUMENTAL BRONZE - a major recent expansion the fingerprint's small-plaster-multiple exemplar badly under-represents: The Mother (2017), The Doors (2023, National Portrait Gallery), I Followed You to the End (2024), Ascension (2024).
- VIDEO AND FILM - Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995), How it feels (1996).
- READYMADE INSTALLATION - My Bed (1998), Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 (1995), The Last Thing I Said to You is Don't Leave Me Here (1999).
- PHOTOGRAPHY - Self-Portrait 12.11.01 (Parkett no. 63), 2001.
Fingerprint disagreements and extensions
- The low coherence score (0.40) is correctly explained as BREADTH, not unreliability - she works in at least seven distinct media with genuinely different visual signatures. Attribution should always be to the nearest exemplar.
- MATERIAL DISAGREEMENT: the tier-1 exemplar set is skewed toward works on paper and small multiples - i.e. toward the auction long tail - which misrepresents the artist. It omits large-scale painting, appliquéd blankets, neon text and monumental bronze, which together carry the majority of her critical significance and nearly all of her value.
- 'Achromatic / limited palette' holds for the drawings but is FALSE for the paintings, which are chromatically saturated in blood-red.
- Handwritten text - arguably her single most recognisable device across neon, appliqué and works on paper - is entirely absent from the fingerprint's consistent-signal list. This is the most significant gap.
- Egon's signature-works list (More of You; More Time Just a-second x; Spending time with you; I Could Feel You; Watching over you) reflects an AUCTION-FREQUENCY centroid, not art-historical centrality. The canonical works are My Bed (1998), Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 (1995), Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995) and Like A Cloud Of Blood (2022).
Critical Reception
Research updated
Critical reception
Arc
Emin's critical standing has inverted over three decades - from tabloid pariah and dismissed 'artistic charlatan' in the 1990s to the subject of a Tate Modern retrospective curated by Tate's own director in 2026. Frieze's 2026 review frames 'A Second Life' as an argument that work long read as private confession is in fact inseparable from the culture that produced it, and that the 'confessional' label was itself a critical misreading applied with a moralising charge the neutral word 'autobiographical' would not have carried.
Reviews 2026
Tracey Emin's Retrospective Bears Witness to an Era
Thrust
Reads the Tate survey as a rehabilitation on art-historical rather than biographical terms; notes the title's triple meaning - survival of cancer, survival of her own reputation, and the art as distinct from the persona.
- Publication
- Frieze
Tracey Emin on Art-Making, Honesty, and Survival: 'Abuse Is Everywhere'
- Date
- 6 March 2026
Thrust
Long-form interview framing the retrospective as a second life on the artist's own terms; also the source confirming the full international tour dates.
- Publication
- Artnet News
Classification note
Egon labelled this 'Retrospective'. The quote shows it is substantively an ARTIST INTERVIEW pegged to the retrospective, not exhibition criticism. The label is directionally right but overstates exhibition-review density.
Tracey Emin: 'Racist behaviour is dividing our country'
- Date
- 26 February 2026
Thrust
CLASSIFICATION CORRECTION: Egon labels this 'Retrospective'. The quote shows it is primarily a POLITICAL INTERVIEW pegged to the Tate opening - Emin on the rise of Reform UK and the British Museum's colonial history. It is exhibition-adjacent press, not exhibition coverage.
- Publication
- The Art Newspaper
6 Boundary-Breaking Artworks in Tracey Emin's Major London Show
- Date
- 27 February 2026
- Thrust
- Service/explainer piece on the Tate show.
- Publication
- Artsy
Classification note
DATA ERROR IN EGON RECORD: this identical URL appears twice in the news record - once dated 27 Feb 2026 labelled 'Retrospective' and once dated 1 Jan 2024 labelled 'Artist Milestone' (the damehood). It is the same Artsy article; the January 2024 date is a metadata error. The damehood itself is a real event but occurred in JUNE 2024 (King's Birthday Honours), not January 2024.
- Author
- Pippa Catterall
Thrust
Academic reading of trauma and transcendence; singles out the monumental bronze I Followed You to the End (2024), the agonised black lines and blood-red floods of Rape (2018), and the placement of Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995) near the start of the show.
- Publication
- The Conversation
View 4 more records
Thrust
Notes the deliberate curatorial decision to place My Bed in the second half of the exhibition with NO wall text, inviting reconceptualisation of it as a structure and place for recuperation rather than abjection - a reading Emin argued for from the outset.
- Publication
- Studio International
Tracey Emin: A Second Life, Tate Modern review - self-obsession put to good use
Thrust
The most sceptical major review found. Mixed-positive: questions her draughtsmanship and calls the neons close to sentimental greetings-card kitsch, while praising the appliquéd hangings and arguing that the 'spiky inarticulacy' of her line conveys emotional trauma far more effectively than conventional draughtsmanship could.
- Publication
- The Arts Desk
- Date
- 20 May 2026
- Thrust
- Notes the exhibition traces 40 years of practice and includes previously unexhibited work.
- Publication
- Art Observed
Unapologetically Feminist - Tracey Emin at Tate Modern
- Thrust
- Feminist reading of the retrospective.
- Publication
- Daily Art Magazine
Historical criticism
1990s reception was dominated by tabloid moralism and dismissal of My Bed and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With as sexual exhibitionism - a reading later criticised as missing the point, since many of those named in the tent were people with whom she had never had sex. Image Journal's 'The Empty Bed: Tracey Emin and the Persistent Self' is representative of the later scholarly rehabilitation.
Egon news record verification
All four items Egon labelled 'Retrospective' are genuinely pegged to the Tate Modern show and are independently verified against the Tate press release, Frieze, The Conversation and Studio International. HOWEVER, TWO OF THEM ARE INTERVIEWS, NOT REVIEWS (Artnet 6 Mar 2026; Art Newspaper 26 Feb 2026) - the label overstates critical-review density. The 'Museum Acquisition' signal is independently CORROBORATED: Tate's own exhibition page carries the verbatim credit line 'Tate Purchased with funds provided by A4 Arts Foundation 2025' for The End of Love (2024). The 'Artist Milestone' signal (damehood) is confirmed by the Isle of Thanet News, Xavier Hufkens and Palazzo Strozzi, but the date attached to it in the Egon record (1 Jan 2024) is WRONG - it was the King's Birthday Honours of June 2024, with investiture in February 2025. EVENTS NOT CAPTURED BY EGON: the 2025 Palazzo Strozzi solo exhibition 'Sex and Solitude'; the confirmed four-venue international tour to April 2028 (Louisiana, Hoam, NGV); the Gagosian £1.2m painting sale at Frieze New York, May 2025; and the 2024 Phaidon monograph.
Publications and media
Mainstream reach
Emin is among the very few contemporary artists with sustained UK mainstream media presence - Telegraph, Spectator, Wallpaper, BBC (Front Row 2013; a BBC World Service film touring TKE Studios). Tate's own promotional copy describes her as 'the most famous artist in Britain'.
Editorial signals
At this career stage 'artists to watch' and 'new talent' lists are not applicable. The equivalent leading indicators here are the Tate directorial-curated retrospective, the Phaidon monograph, and repeated feature coverage across Frieze, Artnet News, The Art Newspaper, Artsy and Art Observed within a six-month window.
Scholarly attention
Sustained and independent of commercial sponsorship: JSTOR-indexed scholarship on the confessional mode; academic essays including Pippa Catterall in The Conversation and Image Journal's study of the persistent self; museum catalogues from Tate (2026) and Palazzo Strozzi (2025); the Phaidon monograph Tracey Emin: Paintings (2024). No catalogue raisonné exists as of August 2026.
Academic and art historical positioning
Canonically positioned as a core Young British Artist and as the principal British exponent of confessional/autobiographical art in the Munch-Schiele-Bourgeois lineage. My Bed and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 are among the most reproduced British artworks of the 1990s. The 2026 critical consensus is that she is being re-read as a serious painter, a claim the Tate exhibition is explicitly constructed to make and which the 2022-2024 auction re-rating of her paintings independently corroborates from the market side.
Gallery & Representation
Research updated
Fair presence
Presented by White Cube and Xavier Hufkens at Art Basel, Art Basel Paris (the 2026 White Cube Paris show was explicitly timed to it), Art Basel Hong Kong, Frieze London and Frieze New York. Additional secondary-market presence at fairs via Gagosian and others. A £1.2m painting sale at Frieze New York in May 2025 was reported among the fair's highlights alongside a $3m+ Koons.
Representation
White Cube
Note
Jay Jopling gave Emin her first solo show in November 1993; the relationship is now in its fourth decade - one of the longest continuous artist-gallery relationships in British contemporary art. In 2026 White Cube presented new paintings and sculptures in Paris to coincide with Art Basel Paris and installed the monumental bronze The Mother (2017) in its courtyard to coincide with the Tate retrospective.
- Role
- Primary global representation since 1993
- Tier
- Tier 1 mega-gallery
- Locations
- London (Bermondsey and Mason's Yard), New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Seoul
Xavier Hufkens
- Note
- Solo exhibitions including The Memory of your Touch, 2017
- Role
- European representation since 2015 - described by the gallery as a decade-long collaboration
- Tier
- Tier 1 European
- Locations
- Brussels
Lorcan O'Neill
- Role
- Historic Italian representation
- Tier
- Tier 2
- Locations
- Rome
Gagosian
- Role
- NOT representation - an active secondary-market trader of her work; sold an Emin painting for c.£1.2m at Frieze New York, May 2025
- Tier
- Tier 1
Casterline|Goodman (Aspen), Carolina Nitsch (New York), Hang-Up Gallery (London), Galerie Glaab (Bern), Dio Horia (Mykonos), Galerie Fluegel-Roncak (Nuremberg)
- Role
- Secondary-market dealers and editions publishers
- Tier
- Tier 2/3
Geographic reach
UK core (London and Margate); Continental Europe via Xavier Hufkens and the 2025 Palazzo Strozzi show; a strong and established US secondary market; Asia expanding materially through White Cube Hong Kong and Seoul and the 2027 Hoam Museum tour stop; Australia entering via NGV Melbourne 2027-28.
Representation history
White Cube from 1993, continuous. Xavier Hufkens added 2015. No defections, disputes or gaps in representation identified. This stability is a positive market signal and unusual over a 33-year career.
Primary market transparency
Gallery-controlled and largely undisclosed. White Cube's website requires enquiry to view available works and prices. Collectors should contact White Cube or Xavier Hufkens directly for current primary pricing.
Sources & research notes
Egon’s artist research combines historical auction records, recent sales, institutional history, critical reception and gallery information. Researched auction records and auction highlights are identified separately.
Read prices with their work, sale date, currency and stated basis. Egon’s market assessments are distinct from reported auction results.
Reference: Egon, “Tracey Emin: Market Intelligence & Investment Profile.”
Research bibliography · 40 sources
Sources recorded for this artist’s research. This bibliography does not assign every source to an individual claim.
- Tracey Emin - Wikipedia
- Tracey Emin Biography - Childhood, Life Achievements & Timeline
- Tracey Emin - EGS, Division of Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought
- Tracey Emin | A Timeline: From Unmade Beds to the Royal Academy - Hang-Up Gallery
- Tracey Emin Installations, Bio, Ideas - The Art Story
- Artist Tracey Emin whoops as her 'My Bed' fetches over $4 million - CNBC
- Tracey Emin's My Bed sets auction record at $4.3m with Christie's
- Tracey Emin's 'My Bed' Sells for $3.77 Million - TIME
- Tracey Emin Value: Top Prices Paid at Auction - MyArtBroker
- Childhood by Tracey Emin - Meaning, Analysis & Auction Results - MyArtBroker
- Why Women Artists Still 'Lag' Behind in the 2026 Art Market - MyArtBroker
- Tracey Emin | Art for Sale, Results & Biography - Sotheby's
- Tracey Emin Market Data: Auction Results & Gallery Prices - MutualArt
- Tracey Emin Prices - Auction Price Results - LiveAuctioneers
- State of the Art Market Today: Why Q4 2025 Could Mark a Definitive Shift - Maddox Gallery
- Tracey Emin: A Second Life - Tate Modern
- Tracey Emin: A Second Life - Press Release | Tate
- Tracey Emin. Self-Portrait 12.11.01 (for Parkett no. 63). 2001 | MoMA
- Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin. Too Much Love, from Do Not Abandon Me | MoMA
- Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin. I Wanted to Love You More, from Do Not Abandon Me | MoMA
- Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin. I Held Your Sperm and Cried, from Do Not Abandon Me | MoMA
- Tracey Emin | Casterline|Goodman Gallery
- Tracey Emin, Paris (2026) | White Cube
- Tracey Emin 2026 | White Cube
- Tracey Emin at Tate Modern | White Cube
- Tracey Emin | Xavier Hufkens
- Tracey Emin - Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi
- Tracey Emin. Sex and Solitude - Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi
- Margate's Tracey Emin receives damehood in King's Birthday Honours
- MAKING A MARK: Tracey Emin became a Dame yesterday
- Tracey Emin's Retrospective Bears Witness to an Era | Frieze
- Tracey Emin: A Second Life - Tate Modern's must-see retrospective | The Conversation
- Tracey Emin: A Second Life - Studio International
- Tracey Emin: A Second Life, Tate Modern review - theartsdesk
- Tracey Emin on Art-Making, Honesty, and Survival: 'Abuse Is Everywhere' - Artnet News
- Tracey Emin: 'Racist behaviour is dividing our country' - The Art Newspaper
- 6 Boundary-Breaking Artworks in Tracey Emin's Major London Show - Artsy
- Tate Modern: Tracey Emin, Through 31st August 26 - Art Observed
- The Empty Bed: Tracey Emin and the Persistent Self - Image Journal
- Tracey Emin - A Second Life - Tate Modern - Slash Paris
Research updates by section
These dates show when Egon’s research sections were updated. Source retrieval dates, where supplied above, refer to individual evidence notes.
Ranking updated . Research sections follow their own update dates.
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