Cultural Creativity

When the artist, Tracey Emin, exhibited her slept-in and unmade bed,1 complete with discarded underwear, condoms, full ashtrays and empty vodka bottles the reactions were unsurprising: tabloid press disgust, a protest by two students who engaged in a pillow fight and much outraged muttering. None of this was new. From Manet’s Olympia to Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, through to Carl Andre’s bricks,2 art has regularly offended the media and the public. Indeed, since Duchamp and the emergence of conceptual art, it is no longer clear to many people exactly what art is. This creates confusion and unease, especially for the museums that sit at the nexus between the artist and the public. Yet, it is the museum that most often defines art. If Emin’s bed remained in her home, it would simply be an untidy bed. By placing it in the context of a museum it becomes an insight into someone’s life; the public exposure of a normally private domain. The bed and Emin become a point of discussion.