Good morning.17 years after it was created, and 16 years after it was first on public view, Tracey Emin’s bed has returned to Tate Britain where it went on display
yesterday morning. Back in 1999, when it was nominated for the Turner Prize, the work became notorious. Viewers weren’t sure what to make of, or were even affronted
by, the stained sheets of a crumpled bed, and on the floor by the bed, the detritus of a weekend of grief and depression following the breakup of a relationship -
cigarette butts, an empty vodka bottle, discarded clothes and worse. It is not pretty – and the fact that the collector who has loaned the bed to the Tate paid ￡2.54
million pounds for it, will not, of course, weigh with the doubters.
What is clear is that for many this work strikes a chord. If Tracey Emin’s bed was a monument to the considerable pain and heartache of her failed relationship,
others plainly recognise in it an icon for the sorrow and grief of other such breakdowns. Human life often begins in bed, where children are conceived and born, and it
is the place where many of us hope our lives will end. But between these beginnings and endings, the bed – like human life itself - seems to be poised between joy and
sadness. It is the place where we shed our clothes and in our nakedness are most vulnerable – and especially so when we invite others into this space. Certainly there
is a potential for great joy, and even when relationships end, the endings are not necessarily as messy as Emin’s bed, but the potential for chaos and mess is
certainly there.
Many myths which tell of a Golden Age – such as the story of the Garden of Eden – imagine humankind going unclothed, as if in some previous glorious and innocent
time we had nothing to hide or fear from one another. Of course the Book of Genesis only begins with innocence - Adam and Eve are very soon covering up. For about
human relationships the Bible is neither dewy eyed nor romantic. You don’t get very far in the Book of Genesis before the dreamy beginning in Chapter 1 has given way
to stories of fratricide, rape, incest, extortion, scheming and betrayal. If Genesis begins with a magnificent dream of what human relationships can be, it also
provides, like Tracy Emin’s bed, a terrible nightmare of how unfortunately they often are.
Tracey Emin makes her bed – or rather unmakes it - every time the work goes on display – and that sounds like a terrible cross to bear. Depicting our failed
relationships, in all their grubby chaos, is not something most of us would relish doing just the once, let alone time and again. More to the point, Christianity
counsels us against making enduring monuments to our griefs, grievances and sorrows – instead we are charged with finding a way to forgive others, and ourselves. Emin
is clear however, that when she decided to make her abject bed into a work of art, she was walking away from it. So if the artist found making her bed cathartic and
redemptive, I hope those who see it find it cathartic too.