My Bed
From the My Bed wiki article:
My Bed is a work by the British artist Tracey Emin. It was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1999 as one of the shortlisted works for the Turner Prize. It consisted of her bed with bedroom objects in an abject state, and gained much media attention. Although it did not win the prize, its notoriety has persisted.
The artwork generated considerable media furore[1], particularly over the fact that the bedsheets were stained with body secretions and the floor had items from the artist’s room (such as condoms, a pair of knickers with menstrual period stains, other detritus, and functional, everyday objects, including a pair of slippers). The bed was presented as it had been when Emin had not got up from it for several days due to suicidal depression brought on by relationship difficulties.[2][3]
Two performance artists, Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi, jumped on the bed with bare torsos in order to “improve” the work, which they thought had not gone far enough. They called their performance Two Naked Men Jump Into Tracey’s Bed. The men also had a pillow fight[4] on the bed for around fifteen minutes, to applause from the crowd, before being removed by security guards.[1] The artists were detained but no further action was taken.[1] Prior to its Tate Gallery showing, the work had appeared elsewhere, including Japan, where there were variant surroundings, including at one stage a “hangman’s noose” hanging over the bed. This was not present when it was displayed at the Tate.[5]
My Bed was bought by Charles Saatchi for £150,000 and displayed as part of the first exhibition when the Saatchi Gallery opened its new premises at County Hall, London (which it has now vacated). Saatchi also installed the bed in a dedicated room in his own home.
Craig Brown wrote a satirical piece about My Bed for Private Eye entitled My Turd. Emin’s former boyfriend, former Stuckist artist Billy Childish, stated that he also had an old bed of hers in the shed which he would make available for £20,000.
From the Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi wiki article:
Two Naked Men Jump into Tracey’s Bed
Their best known performance occurred at 12.58 p.m. on October 25, 1999, when they jumped on Tracey Emin’s installation My Bed, a work incorporating an unmade bed, among other memorabilia, in the Turner Prize at Tate Britain. They called their performance Two Naked Men Jump Into Tracey’s Bed (although in fact they kept their trousers on). They had in mind including some “critical sex” as they considered “a sexual act was necessary to fully respond to Tracey’s piece”, although this part of their intention was not fulfilled. A visitor reported, “Everyone at the exhibition started clapping as they thought it was part of the show. At first, the security people didn’t know what to do.”[2] It was not clear to some whether the action was part of Emin’s display or even a protest against the current visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
Another visitor commented, “After a few minutes of hopping about and shouting I think they ran out of things to do. If they had tried to wreck it, or stolen the vodka or her knickers, I might have felt differently. It made my weekend.”[3] The men only had time to start a pillow fight and attempt a swig from one of the empty vodka bottles next to the bed, before they were apprehended. The police and security guards were booed when they took the pair away. Chai and Xi were arrested for their action, but no charges were pressed, since neither the “gallery nor the artist had any desire to bring the matter further”.[3]
Chai considered that, although Emin’s work was strong, it was nevertheless institutionalised and said, “We want to push the idea further. Our action will make the public think about what is good art or bad art. We didn’t have time to do a proper performance. I thought I should touch the bed and smell the bed.” He had various words written in Chinese and English on his body, such as “Internationalism”, “Freedom” and “Idealism”. Xi said that the work was not interesting enough and also that he wanted to push it further, increasing its significance and sensationalism. Words written on his body included “Anarchism”, “Idealism” and “Optimism”.[2]
One of the words prominent along the length of Chai’s torso was “Anti-Stuckism”. This was surprising as the Stuckists had themselves been critical of Emin’s art. However, Chai and Xi’s explanation is that they were not anti Emin’s type of work (which they merely wanted to “improve”—”We are simply trying to react to the work and the self-promotion implicit in it”), but were opposed to the Stuckists, who are anti-performance art.[4] According to Fiachra Gibbons of The Guardian, the event “will go down in art history as the defining moment of the new and previously unheard of Anti-Stuckist Movement.”[3]
The Tate’s official pronouncement was “The work has now been restored and the exhibition will open to the public as usual at 10 a.m.”, but they would not be drawn on the nature of the restoration.[3]
Other performances
In 1997 they erected fake street signs in an attempt to mislead high profile visitors to the Venice Biennale. At Goldsmiths College in London they scattered £1,200 around a room to point to the commercialism and greed of the art market (the audience scrambled on the floor to pick up the money).[3]
In spring 2000, the artists returned to the Tate, this time to Tate Modern, in an attempt to urinate into Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, which is a urinal laid on its back and signed “R. Mutt”. The Tate denies that they managed to do this.[5] The sculpture is now enclosed in a transparent box.
From the