Vital Signs
LONDON
06.01.09
Left: Artist Tracey Emin. Right: A view of Tracey Emin’s show at White Cube. (All photos: Lynne Gentle)
MASON’S YARD IN SAINT JAMES’S was the place to be in London on Thursday night for Tracey Emin’s “Those Who Suffer Love” at White Cube, and Abraham Cruzvillegas around the corner at Thomas Dane Gallery.
The weather was superb, the designer shades were big, the heels were death-defying, and there were mountains of décolletage as far as the eye could see—coincidence, perhaps, but I suspected homage to endowed and proud Ms. T. Emin. A steady succession of glossy, purring motors dispatched oiled and dapper Euro-men sporting size 0 arm candy. Everyone was groomed and dressed to the nines—a rare spectacle in London, where the drizzle often defeats even the most determined sartorial efforts.
Where Emin’s work was once shocking and self-consciously “obscene,” it now seems almost quaint; its poetry has outshone its shock value. The exhibition, comprising neon, animation, sculpture, and works on paper, was beautifully hung, and even the animation of a woman (certainly the artist) masturbating felt almost PG-13.