Tracy Emin

If I cold get money for leaving my bed like that...'d call myself inventive not greedy... bu what's the latest??? j ps...I don't read/watch/listen to the news

Hmmm..... it's a tricky one. Emin was working on a schools project where she helped the students make a quilt. The school now wants to auction the quilt for £35,000 (value only added because Tracy Emin worked on it) to raise money for school funds and now she wants it back. Presumably she did the work with them because she wanted the school to have something to display, not to sell. But if they're hard-up enough to need to sell it then should she forget it? I think the point she is making is not one of greed but that not everything is a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. However, I think that demanding the return of the piece is petty and churlish. It's unlikely that the school will want to keep it now, and yet since she's said that it can't be sold in her name, it no longer has any value. I expect it will stay in the cupboard where it has been put while the dispute is played out and that just makes the whole exercise a waste of time and bitter energy.

I think her point is that children's first association with art should not be in terms of its commercial value. I tend to agree. However her demand that the quilt be returned is crazy too. I think that the school should have kept in touch with her and discussed its plans with her. She's not daft - she realises that schools need cash and I'm sure a compromise could have been reached. The quilt could have been loaned out for a fee to exhibitions but retained by the school - maybe it should go out during school holidays and be on display in the school during term-time as an incentive to kids to do something wonderful. It is a magnificent piece of work and a classic example of what kids can do given imaginative direction. Even if she does refuse provenance the quilt is still worth a lot of money - especially after this bout of publicity - as everyone knows that it is by her and the kids. I hope they can work something out or this will put other famous artists off working in schools.

Once you start taking money off little kids who have spent time sitting sewing and creating a quilt, it's time to leave the public arena, I feel. It shows mean-spiritedness of the nth degree and the bad feeling will only rebound on the "artist" (I use that word advisedly!!)

i think emin's point is was that it was a community art project and that it wasn't her belief at the time that the school would then try and make money out of it...the school need money to display it as at the moment it is not on display....they can't afford the £3000 or so to get a display case (which seems absurdly expensive) so decided to sell it instead (again some flawed logic at work there) i'm sure if they had approached her and asked for a contribution towards the display costs, she might have been more co-operative..

I'm sure they could just hang the damn thing from a length of dowelling if they want to display it..

Putting the quilt aside for a moment, I don't see anything wrong with a creative person, and this includes writers, wanting to be paid for their work. Plumbers and carpenters do not work for free. Sports figures do not work for free. Of course, they might donate their time once in a while for a good cause, but why should we expect artists to work for free? I know a woman here in Warsaw. She is a jazz singer and her husband plays saxophone. They work restaurants and the like from time to time on Sundays and have difficulty getting paid because the owners tell them 'oh well you play music for the love of it don't you?' The answer to that is 'well in that case why do you charge for the food here? why don't you just open the place up and give free meals to everyone who wanders in?' Tracy Emin is not my idea of an artist. I saw that bed thing and the tent (I think that was hers). Bunch of nonsense in my book, but if people are willing to part with cash for such stuff, more power to her. No one is being forced at the point of a gun.

It's a complicated one. I sympathise with the school in this specific case but it does raise bigger general questions about the nature of 'community arts' projects. If, as many of them do, they get arts funding to enable them to take place in the first place, than the point of this is to subsidise artistic activity, not subsidise the school. Schools do need money but selling artwork, produced as part of students education is not, in my opinion, the way they should be getting it. This effectively would effectively mean that, as part of their education, kids are working to pay for their education. Would the next step be to have schools with footwear factories or fast-food joints attached in order to help pay the bills?

I think she's mightily miffed that the fate of the quilt was being decided by people who were not involved at all in its creation. The quilt was a joint effort between Emin and the children and I'm guessing none of the participants were consulted about its fate. I can emphathise, I 'do' visual art and there is a very strong emotional attachment. It's the exposure of the personal. Just as in literature. I really respect her. I think she's got integrity and I support her point completely.