Tracey Emin is her own muse. She believes in "good manners" and
she never makes art for money. It would, she says, cause her ill
health. Jeanette Winterson agrees that manners are important;
manners make people feel welcome and in a sense, when she works
with autobiographical material - as she did in her debut novel,
Oranges are not the only fruit and most recently in Why be happy
when you could be normal? - she is welcoming us into her life. Art
is good manners, she ventures, because it is not elitist and it
does not cast aside.
Tracey and Jeanette are in conversation at the Hayward Gallery
at their Wide Open School lecture in the gallery's specially
created upstairs lecture hall and the subject for debate is the use
of the autobiographical in art. Many of you will no doubt already
know much of the work that Emin has created over the last twenty
years. From her tent ('Everyone I've ever slept with 1963-1995') to
her infamous unmade bed, her abortions and her very personal
exploration of love, trust, desire, childhood memories and trauma,
she has reworked highly charged autobiographical incidents into
art.
So too, to an extent, has Winterson, whose career is bookended
by the two autobiographies mentioned above, with her most recent
work reflecting on how her life has changed since she wrote Oranges
over 25 years ago. Although they live down the road from each
other, the two artists rarely get the opportunity to talk and
occasionally they find themselves shouting in the street about some
outrage or other, Winterson confides.
Winterson is clearly a fan of Emin's work and notes how calm and
relaxed she feels as she sits beneath a large projection of one of
Emin's blue nudes. Blue is a controversial colour this evening
however as Winterson questions Emin's support for the Conservative
party after an audience member asks a question about how both
artists have learnt to value themselves.
Winterson responds that it is doing the work, "not thinking or
worrying about doing it, just doing it" that underpins her sense of
self worth. Emin replies that she thinks education is the key, and
this answer provides Winterson with her foil: "and as a
Conservative voter, how do you think Michael Gove is doing on that
front?" Emin side-steps a smidgon and genuflexes about home
schooling, muttering that education has been destroyed over the
last few years. Perhaps so, but the damage that Gove has wreaked on
those wishing to pursue further education is far beyond anything
that occured under the recent Labour administration.
And while we're on the subject of money, or rather the lack of
it, and of opportunity for those not as fortunate to be rich or to
be born into wealth, let's address Emin's eulogy to good manners.
Reflecting on her youthful arrogance and bolshiness, she says she
now takes nothing for granted: "having good manners is my entry
card." This, after demanding that the director of the Hayward
Gallery brings her some red wine. I get the sense that Emin's
penchant for good manners comes from a place of fear (of being
forgotten or ignored) rather than manners from a place of respect
for her fellow human being. Jeanette's good manners on the other
hand suggest a genuine desire to invite us into her world, to
invite us to engage.
Life, Winterson believes, is a cover story. She dislikes the way
that some of us tend to separate the real self from the desired
self and argues for acceptance of the illision of the two. She's
never signed a contract before the book's been written because if
she did, she says, "it would mean writing it for them, not me."
What does Tracy think of this historical moment, where
confessionals are de rigeur, from Jeremy Kyle to autobiography? Do
confessionals always require an act of intervention on the part of
the other? "I think we have to be existential about it and see
ourselves from the outside. Without that we can't make work about
the self."
Emin clearly loves Winterson too and reveals that she asked her
intern to buy every book Winterson's ever written and promised to
read them before the debate but world events intervened. For her,
Oranges was a manual for girls, an inspirational guide about how to
escape a crap childhood. But today, life is good for Emin - she
spent a few hours at the Tate, at the Edward Munch exhibition which
she believes would not have been shown fifteen years ago. Today,
she says, there's a desire for emotionality in art that was
unfashionable for most of the post-2nd world war era. A demand for
the self, self expression and all that it requires creatively.
As the evening draws to a close an actress asks how they both
cope with creative blocks. Emin says she curls up in front of the
telly and watches crap all day and it eventually motivates her to
do some work. Winterson is convinced that creative blocks are in
fact a sign of a blockage elsewhere that needs attention. Creative
writing for her must be a place of wellbeing, good mental health, a
nurturing and expansive space which only ever yields good. And from
the woman who once said that language is a racehorse that she was
made to ride, you get the sense she's speaking her truth.
For more events at the Wide Open School at Southbank visit: southbankcentre.co.uk
