Tracey Emin's Bed is sold at auction for
over £2.5m
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jul/01/tracey-eminmy-bed-sale-auction
Tracey Emin's installation, My Bed, which documents the artist's
traumatic relationship breakdown, sold for £2.54m at Christie's auction
on Tuesday.
One of Britain's most famous and polarising pieces of modern art, My Bed
was made in Emin's Waterloo council flat in 1998. Referred to by the
artist as an unconventional and uncompromising self-portrait through
objects, it features the artist's own bed covered in stained sheets,
discarded condoms, blood-stained underwear and empty bottles of
alcohol.
The Turner-nominated artwork was first purchased by Charles Saatchi in
2000 for just £150,000. On the market for the first time, My Bed was put
up for sale as part of Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art sale,
which also included works by Francis Bacon, Peter Doig, Andy Warhol
and Jackson Pollock.
Hundreds crammed into the Christie's auction house in St James's in
central London, including Emin herself, to watch and take part in the
historic sale, with the auction house estimating her work would sell for
up to £1.2m.
Overseen by auctioneer Jussi Pylkkänen, the sale opened at £650,000
and, as the bids came in thick and fast, the tension in the auction room
was palpable until Emin's seminal artwork eventually went for over
double the estimate at £2.54m to Jay Jopling, the art dealer and founder
of the White Cube gallery. As the winning bid was announced, Emin
smiled and applauded.
Jopling is a leading figure in the art world and made his name in the 1990s
as the main dealer of those in the Young British Artist (YBA) movement
such as Damien Hirst, Jake and Dinos Chapman and Emin herself. In