Tracey Emin
The neons are the works most often owned and most often misunderstood, because a different colour is a different work.
Emin's reputation was made by two objects — the appliquéd tent of 1995 and the bed shown at the Turner Prize in 1999 — and the market has spent twenty-five years catching up with the fact that neither is representative. Underneath the notoriety is a consistent method: autobiography, put into whatever medium suits it. Monoprint, neon in her own handwriting, appliquéd blanket, cast bronze, and since the late 2010s the large, loose, extremely direct paintings of the female figure that are now the centre of the practice and the top of the market.
The neons are what owners hold most often and get wrong most often. They exist in defined editions, generally of three to ten plus artist's proofs, in a specified colour — and the colour is not a finish, it is part of the work. The same phrase in pink and in blue are two different editions with two different values. Transformer, mounting and certificate should all be present; a neon separated from its paperwork and its original transformer is a materially harder sale, and a re-blown tube is a condition issue rather than a repair.
The paintings of the last decade have moved fastest, helped by the Royal Academy and Munch Museum exhibitions and by the public account of her cancer and its aftermath. Monoprints and drawings are unique, numerous and the most accessible unique works she makes. The blankets are unique and are textile conservation problems — light, distortion and past cleaning all matter. And there is a large output of accessible print editions that is a genuinely different market from the unique work.
She was made a Dame in 2024 and has built a studio complex and an art school in Margate, where she grew up. That last part is not incidental to the market: the late work, the town and the biography have become a single story, and it is the story buyers at the top of this market are buying into.
At auction
- My Bed£2.55m
- Mattress, linens, pillows and objects, 1998 · Christie's, London · 1 July 2014
- Christie's, as widely reported
- Bought by Count Christian Duerckheim and subsequently lent to Tate.
Results as reported at the time of sale, inclusive of buyer's premium. They are a record of what specific works achieved on specific days, not a guide to what any other work is worth.
Selling a work
We represent the seller rather than the auction house: comparing houses and sale dates, negotiating the seller's terms, and keeping the paperwork and remittance in your name. What sets the value of a Tracey Emin sets out what we look at first.