Tracey Emin in front of her artwork.
Tracey Emin is just as well known for her irreverent behaviour and provocative defiance of social convention as she is for the controversial artworks she makes using a number of different media. Once viewed as an enfant terrible of the art world, she achieved notoriety through her iconoclastic attitude and her unabashedly confessional creations that continue to divide critics today.
Over the past decades, she has carved out a niche for herself, and she’s now generally regarded as belonging to the establishment she once mocked and derided, but this transformation has not made her any less popular in the art market. In 2024 alone, she has already had exhibitions in both New York and Brussels, with another opening in London in September.
Prints account for 65% of Tracey Emin auction sales since 2000, with most prints fetching between £1,000 and £5,000, though, as you can see from the list below, they can sell for far more than that, especially if they are unique monotypes.
If you have a Tracey Emin print and would like to find out more about how to sell it, get in touch with Mark Littler today.
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These Feelings Were True
This set of lithographs in colours was sold by Phillips in June 2021 for £38,000. Created in 2020, the sequence is made up of eight self-portraits in Tracey Emin’s trademark scratchy, raw style. The limited colour palette and scrawling, jagged lines are typical of the artist, as is her attempt to explore the idea of the self from numerous different angles and perspectives.
This series of lithographs is very popular, and it accounts for four out of six of the most expensive Emin prints ever sold at auction. The cheapest of the four examples sold for £32,000 in October 2022.
These Feelings Were True Sold by Phillips in 2021
3.30 Am – Again
This is a unique drawing on a lithographic background, and it was sold by Christie’s in October 2023 for £35,000. It is just one of a number of similar artworks from a loose, ongoing series of pictures that are centred around a bed and include one or two figures, usually in intimate, emotionally vulnerable situations, with titles such as On My Knees, and There was Fire in my eyes.
Beds have always featured prominently in Emin’s artwork, with her 1999 installation piece, My Bed, remaining her most famous creation to date. The unmade bed, surrounded by days’ worth of litter and detritus from the time Emin spent languishing in it during a breakdown, earned the artist a Turner Prize nomination, though the piece was also widely criticised and ridiculed.
3.30 Am – Again Sold by Christie’s in 2023
Bunny Girl/Head Down/Legs Split/Sexy Minx/Sexy In High Heels
This unique sequence of monotypes far exceeded its estimated £3,000 to £5,000 when it was sold by Christie’s in March 2019 for a staggering £35,000. The five figurative images are typical of Tracey Emin in their raw intensity and desire to shock.
Emin has stated many times that she is an admirer of Egon Schiele, the 20th century Austrian artist famed for his numerous sexually explicit portraits, and for the brutal beauty of the contorted figures in his paintings. Whilst Emin lacks the technical skill and draughtsmanship that Schiele displays, echoes of the Expressionist artist can be seen in many of her works, including in the awkward, twisted poses of the figure in these monotypes.
Bunny Girl/Head Down/Legs Split/Sexy Minx/Sexy In High Heels Sold by Christie’s in 2019
It Just Happens
This 2001 woodcut print on calico was sold for £30,000 by Christie’s in June 2011. Like much of Emin’s work from this time, it radiates anger and defiance, as if the artist is daring people to comment on the crude posture of the subject, or the fiery words emblazoned above and below the figure.
The words do, however, echo two messages that recur throughout Emin’s work. The first part (“Don’t look for revenge, it just happens”) displays a calm acceptance in the face of adversity, a desire to just get on with life without expending energy on things that are, ultimately, inconsequential. However, the second part of the message (“If you don’t like it then go and fuck yourself, don’t take it out on me”) is full of the fury and desire to provoke that drove so many of Emin’s early offerings.
It Just Happens Sold by Christie’s in 2011
Two Young Women
This 1985 linocut print is one of Emin’s earlier pieces, produced when she was studying printmaking at Maidstone Art College, before she garnered national and international fame and notoriety. It was sold by Bloomsbury Auctions in December 2014 for £24,000, quadrupling its estimated £4,000 to £6,000.
Like Francis Bacon, Emin destroyed much of her early work. She claims that during an emotionally turbulent time, she took a sledgehammer to all the paintings she produced whilst studying at the Royal College of Art because she couldn’t see a place for them in the art world at the time.
Two Young Women Sold by Bloomsbury in 2014
Suffer Love X
Echoes of Egon Schiele can again be felt in this explicit 2009 monotype that was sold in October 2023 by Sotheby’s for £20,023. Tracey Emin is famed for her candour in confronting taboo subjects such as abortion, sexuality, and emotional instability, and she’s often viewed as a confessional artist because so much of what she produces is inspired by her life (or, in the case of My Bed, a direct product of her life).
The title of this monotype encapsulates two of the most recurring themes in Emin’s work: suffering and love. Her early pieces especially are concerned with depression, anger, and hurt, yet her most recent creations have been more focused on values such as love and hope. Her 2020 cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment made her reevaluate her life in many ways, and she recently stated: “I have never been happier or more content.” Whilst her work still pushes the boundaries, the overwhelming theme of her most recent pieces seems to be living every hour of every day as fully as possible.
Suffer Love X Sold by Sotheby’s in 2023
