It's Art, Jim, but as We Know It. David Bowie with Tracey Emin

She came to Dublin did Tracey Emin. We walked around the library at Trinity
and loved the smell of old leather. We lined up with ten thousand others to
get a ten-second squint at the Book of Kells. A handful of patients from a nearby
psychiatric hospital helped create an atmosphere of benign hysteria. One tall
skinny gentleman stood by a fifteenth-century harp, alternately rocking backwards
and forwards then revolving slowly all the while intoning his mantra of 'NAAW-peer-NAAW'

She came to the gig at the Olympia did Tracey. She rocked backwards and forwards
and shimmied like a disco-queen (which she nearly was once). Possibly screaming
her mantra 'Write this, Draw this'. If she wanted, she could travel the length
and breadth of the land with me and my band. Everyone from stage hands to musicians
immediately fall in love with her. She's so charismatic, she sends off sparks.

We stay at the U2-owned Clarence Hotel on the River Liffey. Iman takes some
photos of us looking out to the far side of the water and two small girls throw
themselves into the shot.

'Are you a model?', asks the smaller one, of Tracey. Tracey laughs. 'Make your
mouth do this', orders the girl and makes a grimace. Tracey obliges. 'Naw, you're
no model. Now send me copies of them pictures to me house will ya', and they
nonchalantly wander off picking up their previous conversation. Back inside
the hotel, Tracey and I talk.

There is a childlike excitement that at last people will show, in a gallery,
all the nooks, crannies and fag-ends of her life. I never knew her before this
year, but who I see in front of me now is someone highly charged with solipsistic
overdrive. Within 30 minutes of meeting her I have a full run-down on her newest
intimate relationships, her hopes and dreams for her personal life as well as
proffered opinions on Balthus ('a dirty old man, a pervert'), my interviews
with Damien Hurst ('You're obsessed by him') and her sponsorship contract with
a rather exotic alcohol brand. The latter it seems is extremely important to
her as booze is a 24-hour companion to her life.

I love her fractured energy and could sit and listen to her for hours. Although
her viewpoints, tastes and interests are standard and unvaryingly those of any
eighteen-year-old art student, it slowly dawns on me that she is in fact a 34-year-old
woman. Her natural youthfulness is exhilarating. She is also extraordinarily
sexy. The elastic lips, famous broken teeth and half -closed eyes, deliver one
of the more seductively interesting faces in British art. I think I can look
at her face for even longer than I can listen to her talk.

She wants very much to be firmly identified in this modern world, but time
and again she reveals a deep fascination with passions from another time - Munch,
Schiele, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Giotto, narrative painting.

She says her work has been compared to Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol. I don't
buy into this at all. If anyone springs to mind it's William Blake as a woman,
written by Mike Leigh. There is little sarcasm, cynicism or even intended irony
in her work. It has little of the mystic hippiness of Kiki Smith or the Fuck
You diffidence of her best friend Sarah Lucas. It has more of the construct
of the self. The dawning of late eighteenth-century self-consciousness that
first realisation of self you find in early nineteenth-century self-portraits.
Or maybe, even, a Mary Shelley of Margate.

There's also the smashed glass-splinter effect echoing the deeply dysfunctional
work found at Gugging Hospital in Vienna, the bastion of working 'Outside' artists,
or at L'art Brut, Lausanne, the Vatican of fringe.

Her little museum in Waterloo is not so much a 90's absurdity , but more an
updated reflection of the nineteenth century, 'I am' reverberations of the John
Soane house and museum. A few others, but only a few, also have an ambivalence
toward her work. Charles Saatchi, in curating his upcoming 'Masterworks at the
RA', belatedly acquired a single 1995 Emin piece, her tent with lovers' names,
only a few weeks ago. This doesn't seem to imply a passion for her work, but
rather a need to make up a full set of Mod-Brit Artists. Amusingly, this piece
having acquired an almost iconic status set Charles back considerably more than
he is used to shelling out. Having said all that, there is an earnest and serious
folk-story telling quality to her work, that pulls an audience in completely.
When I saw a recent show of hers in Toronto, two girls in their early twenties
were sitting mesmerised in front of one of Tracey's video monologues. There
were tears running down their cheeks. Now that's art, Jim, but as we know it.

DB So, how does only knowing half the alphabet feel? Which half do you prefer
anyway?

TE Only knowing half the alphabet. Well, I do know the whole alphabet except
I can't actually put it in the right order. I can see this going into 'Pseuds
Corner' immediately.

DB You don't feel wanted unless you're in there once in a while. Is there any
dyslexia involved?

TE When I was seventeen they said I was dyslexic, but I don't actually think
I in fact was. I just never went to school basically. And they had to come up
with some theory like that because I obviously was quite clever. Except if you
leave school at thirteen there's a certain...I mean most people leave school
at eighteen. And do 'A' levels. But I didn't.

DB I was out at sixteen.

TE You're older than me.

DB Am I? Not much!

TE Not much, no.

DB Much of the time I feel a little bit like Tom Hanks. Did you ever see Big?
Well, Tom Hanks in this film wakes up one day - he's thirteen years old - and
he makes a wish at a fair ground at this very strange wishing machine, and he
wishes that he was a grown-up, and he wakes up a grown-up the next morning.
I often feel like that.

TE I think that's what happened to me. That's probably what happened to me
when I was thirteen, yeah. I'm the happiest I've ever been in the whole of my
life now at 34 and I really like things about being a woman.

DB Is it a sense of contentment or do you still have strong ambition?

TE Oh God no, fuck, I, well - I wouldn't actually say I was that ambitious,
but other people might think very differently. But my ambition is not a problem
- whatever I really want, I find a way of being able to achieve it, so I don't
actually think - especially with art, my art is just part of me and it's just
what I do. My idea of success is being able to do what you want to do, and if
that's being ambitious then I am. And the thing about being happier than I've
ever been now, it's the first time in my life that I've come to terms with who
I am, and I seem to be accepted for who I am, and I have a good group of friends
around me and that makes me feel good. So, it's got quite meaningful really.

DB But those friends that seem to gravitate towards you, are they friends that
you've acquired since you've become popular as an artist, or were they friends
that you were amassing before you became popular?

TE Some of them were before, like Sarah Lucas, Carl Freedman, Gillian Wearing.
I knew them before. I mean they knew me when people just thought I was completely
mad.

DB But all three of you were thrust into friendship, no? - more by the circumstances
of your art?

TE Yeah.

DB So what about prior to you becoming an artist? Do you have friends from
that period?

TE Well, my best friend Maria, since I was four really. But she's like my sister.
It's almost like we have the same blood.

DB What does she do?

TE She's antiques - well not antiques, like art nouveau, art deco, pre-war
artefacts - bits of furniture and stuff.

DB So she lives by her eye as well. How does she read?

TE You mean read as a person..?

DB Does she know the whole alphabet?

TE Yes, she knows the whole alphabet, yeah. She reads a lot actually. She probably
reads a book a week or something. But then she's just sitting there, isn't she,
with all her antiques and stuff about her, reading books. But I'm - you shouldn't
say about me not reading. I didn't read a book until I was about seventeen.

DB I didn't say you didn't read.

TE You did, last night, you said, 'You don't read'

DB I was just being provocative.

TE I didn't read until I was seventeen. And then from seventeen I read a book
a week till 1989, and the last big major bulk reading that I did was esoterics,
and then after that I stopped reading basically. But I read occasionally.

DB '89 - would that be the period when you really started to discover your
own style of work?

TE No, 1989 to '90 was when I was pregnant and I had an abortion and I stopped
everything. I stopped art, I stopped reading, I stopped living, I smashed all
my paintings up in 1988, and then I just threw a load in the skip in 1989, and
then destroyed everything in 1990.

DB And when did you start working within an autobiographical genre?

TE I've always worked in an autobiographical way.

DB OK, but when it became more literary, like using your writing in your work.

TE When I realised that I had some value, you mean?

DB Yes.

TE Well, first of all I've always written. I've always kept a diary since I
was fourteen. I'm a prolific letter writer - the most obsessive letter writer
- and in 1992 I did a philosophy course for two years, and that really sorted
out a lot of things in my head regarding contemporary art, because previously
all I could think about was like Edvard Munch and like I said Byzantine frescoes,
Giotto and early Renaissance. My head had stopped working. There was nothing
artistically that filled it up, and then after doing the philosophy course -
modern philosophy - it kinda opened up a part of my mind which hadn't been explored
before...it's like when I started looking at early Renaissance paintings, I
started to understand classical music a lot more, and when I did the philosophy
course, I started to understand contemporary art, so it opened up a big space
and I realised that anything could be art. It's the conviction and the belief
behind what you do - the essence of where it's coming from so it's more like
a conceptual idea, even though I don't make conceptual looking work. And in
1992, I asked people to invest in my creative potential, which I found…

DB Very modern.

TE That wasn't supposed to be a piece of art, that was out of desperation.
(Long pause.) I mean you must have had it. A time in your life when you've been
so low, when everything is just so terrible that given the choice you think
that either you're going to die or that this is what death feels like, and then
you can just carry on. And at certain times in my life that's happened to me
quite profoundly, and it's at those moments when everything gets shook up and
everything gets rediscovered. It's almost like a new me or something.

DB I felt very much like that in the late 70's. I probably felt every day was
intolerable and that living itself was a burden that I wasn't prepared to continue
hoisting upon my small frail shoulders. Yeah. Do you see what you're doing as
a trade or...? You like early Renaissance, and also, to a certain extent, Expressionism.

TE Yeah, a lot. Especially Schiele and Munch. Not all Expressionism. Some of
it I think is a bit almost passe' kind of, almost like illustration.

DB Well I see - you're not going to like this - I see Schiele more as an illustrator.
His pencil and ink work is extraordinarily strong. He has a fantastic eye for
layout and design. I find his painting really murky.

TE He was only 28 when he died.

DB It doesn't matter. Shall we go through a list of great painters that were
dead by the age of 28? It doesn't demean the work he did do and does it really
matter, if it puts it into any kind of perspective? Probably not, because the
hold he has on people seems to be essentially some of what art now embraces.
The hard image. The cult of personality.

TE Yeah, but I think with Egon Schiele you've got this problem. Because his
work's reproduced so often, the general public take it as a...

DB A graphic logo almost?

TE ...as opposed to...Yeah, it's like Munch's Scream, for example, it's used
even in cartoons.

DB Oh, shall I tell you something interesting about that - not many people
know this?

TE Yeah, go on.

DB What do you think of when you see that picture?

TE A noise coming from the hills and it's coming from the fields.

DB That's interesting, because not many people would say that. Most people
would say, and wrongly, that the figure in the painting is doing the scream.
But he's not, he's reacting to a scream.

TE Yeah.

DB Munch made notes prior to making the painting, suggesting that he wanted
to capture the reaction to a scream, so the guy is reacting to a scream. He's
not the screamer, in a manner of speaking he's the screamee!

TE Yes, but it's also like the scream that you hear in your head. I've got
a love poem for Carl [Freedman] and it's: 'You put your hand across my mouth,
But still the noise continues. Every part of my body is screaming. I'm lost.
About to be smashed into a thousand million pieces. Each part forever belonging
to you'. And that's about The Scream.

DB A thousand million little screamers.

TE It's about having sex, but a love poem. Don't you think that when your whole
body's screaming? And it's terrible when it happens, but when it goes away it's
like a loss and you want it to come back again.

DB Staying on your influences for a second. Do you shun the more technically
aspiring styles of work, like high Renaissance or, to come up to today, somebody
who's technically pretty sound, such as Freud, who one could feel dismissive
of just because technique seems to be pre-eminent in what that work represents?

TE Yeah, at least in Freud I think like that, yeah.

DB Is it a feeling of vulnerability?

TE The thing is, to start with, Expressionism I do not like, the majority of
Expressionism, when I think about it, I don't like. I saw a really big showing
of it in Brussels last year, and I just don't like loads of people like Heckel
and people like that, I find them quite - just too base or something.

DB I love Heckel

TE Yeah whatever, but...

DB I love his woodblock prints. Again, I'm not keen on his paintings.

TE Well, maybe that's also why I relate to them, I'm not a very good painter.
I don't mind saying it. I get accused of being naive, but I don't see anything
naive about what I do.

DB I would take it as a compliment.

TE My drawings actually can be quite sophisticated now, I mean I've been drawing
since 1982.

DB What about the word 'Art'? Botticelli against Manzoni's shit in a tin-can.
Is the 'Art' word big enough to encompass both works?

TE But you can talk about the alchemy of both of those things. You could wax
lyrical as much as you like, yeah.

DB Does alchemy apply as much as the word art?

TE Yes, but I wouldn't use the word alchemy, you see, what's really good about
the word art is that art is a word like love, or god or whatever. It transcends
so many things.

DB So you're content with the word.

TE Yeah, definately, but it's taken me a long time to come to terms with that.

[pagebreak]

DB Do you not think that the word art is so off-putting to the majority of
people?

TE No, I don't think so, not any more. I think that's changing. Definitely.
If someone asked me what I do, I say I'm an artist, without any hesitation.
Art's for everyone.

DB I saw a recent statistic that suggested that as many people go to galleries
and art museums as go to rock shows and clubs.

TE Yes, but also with art it's such a recent thing that - Britain's more literary
based, but now it's becoming visually based as well. It's becoming more aesthetic
with everything, from furniture to fashion to nice looking, for example.

DB I don't agree with you there. We are not primarily a literary based nation.
I think that's a cliché' that's been thrown around far too much. I think
we're incredibly visually aware actually. We always have been. I think that
the history of British painting is extraordinary. Every century a great fist
of brilliance has thrust through the old sixteenth-century repression. Always
there has been a great painter.

TE Turner for one.

DB Do you know where the word 'Impressionism' came from?

TE Tell me.

DB After Monet's gang's efforts at capturing the spirit of impression of Turner's
light on water, Monet did a little manifesto signed by the others which said
something like: 'Our intention is to create form in movement and the phenomena
of light, knowing we have been preceded by the illustrious Monsieur Turner'.
Hey, it's not fucking French - the seed of modern art, mate!

TE What's so brilliant about Turner is the fact that it was through experience
of living so...

DB Yeah, he was a randy old bugger....

TE Yeah, he was, but apparently, I heard this and I really believed it, that
he had a house, three-storey house in Chelsea, and the bottom bit was a pub,
the middle of it was a brothel and at the top was his studios. And when he died
Ruskin came and destroyed all of his erotic drawings and..

DB Yes, Ruskin certainly did that, but Turner also lived down in Margate as
Admiral Puggy Booth. He had, of course, a masked life, he was living with the
widow Mrs Booth down on the coast. I mean he was quite a strange randy little
guy. Working class and a bit insecure.

TE Margate. Another great connection there. Me and Turner.

DB Wilde said, 'Those who want a mask have to wear it. That is their punishment'.
Ironically, by becoming the anonymous Admiral Booth, Turner gave himself the
freedom to create some of his most seriously breakthrough paintings.

TE Yeah, but imagine tying yourself to a mast to know what it feels like to
be in the head of a storm. I mean, that to me is what art is about really. It's
like this risk thing, it's like pushing yourself to a limit which is beyond
your own notion of existence.

DB So that's art for you?

TE Yeah.

DB How about artists who don't use a life/experience approach. Would you dismiss
it?

TE No, because if I did that, I'd waste a lot of time and a lot of energy looking
over my shoulder. What's more important to me is to look forward to what I'm
doing, not start complaining about what other people are doing.

DB Because, say, you get somebody like Ken Curry, for instance. Do you know
his work - the Scots painter? Well, he's very technically accomplished. Incredibly
proficient. Now let's be really corny. Tintoretto, no, even better, Titian -
who was not exactly, you know, he had parties and everything, quite a socialite,
but he had a serious approach to painting and doing a good job. Not so much
about expressing himself or..

TE Yes, but I've got friends who do that. They get up, they go to the studio,
they do their work but they..

DB They do extraordinarily accomplished paintings.

TE Yes, and then they go home again. But it's not like that for me, and it
never has been. Basically, I don't think there's any point in making something
which has already been made before.

DB So you put high value on originality?

TE Yeah.

DB Why?

TE Because it's the moment of something.

DB Is a more traditional artist not creating another kind of moment in his
own work?

TE For themselves, yeah, but not for the rest of the world.

DB That's very general isn't it, because there is a world that also appreciates
that kind of work, no? [I want to suggest that more people flock to see a Turner
or Vermeer show than say a Gilbert & George, but Tracey's off and running]

TE No, I'm talking for the whole world. I'm not talking about the people who
happen to be patting me on the back at the moment. The thing is that if you've
got a message and you want it to be heard, you have to find a way of communicating
which excites people, and for me it wouldn't be worth doing what I did if I
just re-created something which was done fifty...I can paint really good Edvard
Munch paintings. I can do really good Heckel woodcuts, 'cause I did it as a
student. But I'm not a student any more - well, we're all a student of life
if you want to put it like that - but for me I have to be excited about what
I'm doing, I have to reinvent, re-create.

DB So it comes back to the same question. You sound a little bit dismissive
of artists who don't work in what would be called the original.

TE I'm sure a lot more of them are a lot more dismissive towards me.

DB Rembrandt doesn't care.

TE Yes, Rembrandt's fucking brilliant.

DB But he was working in a very traditional style.

TE But he had a fantastic sense of humour. Look at his etchings, all the ones
with him dressing up and everything. What was going through his mind when he
was doing that? Other people weren't doing those kinds of things at that time.
Also, I really really like Flemish and Dutch Master painting...I like the narrative
and I like looking at the paintings and working out exactly what was going on.

DB Yes. So there is something in it for you, in a traditional narrative way?

TE Yes, of course. I mean a lot of my work can actually have the appearance
of traditional work - my drawings or whatever. Things for me are quite personal.
I had to come to terms with my failure as an artist. And the artist that I was
trying to be was that traditional type artist, and I was just crap at it. I
was just not very good at it. I had to find a way for myself. So what I'm talking
about is personal experience. I'm not being judgmental about other people, I'm
being judgmental on one person and that's me.

DB Yes, I understand. That's good then isn't it?

TE Yes.

DB I don't want to argue about it (chuckles).

TE We're not going to get into a fight or anything. (long pause). No, but the
biggest influence in my life is my life, like my experiences - not what I do
from day to day but how I make sense of the world or whatever.

DB Fame in a frame.

TE Fame in a frame (laughs).

DB Because - what your work is becoming, whether you like it or not, is a celebration
of personality, because of its autobiographical hub, and because of its literary
pursuit. Your work has been dragged out of the library, almost out of the area
of memorabilia and autobiography into an art context or gallery-showing context,
which is quite interesting. It doesn't have what some critics would call deeper
context, it has a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of honesty to it - it's
not for instance like Beuys or whatever. His thing, I feel, works in a different
way because there is much more of a sense of what you called alchemy, or complex
symbolism, about his work. With you it's not like that, so it becomes much more
of a personality based subject. Anyone can empathise with your strong life-story
line.

TE Yeah, but there's been loads of people who've had...Gilbert & George..

DB I'm not attacking you.

TE Gilbert & George, Andy Warhol, let's say van Gogh. More people know
that van Gogh cut his ear off, than know the titles of his paintings.

DB Of course they do yes, yeah - yes, but they're not quite so obviously the
subject of their own work. Gilbert & George nearly, but even in their work
they themselves are only cyphers standing in for themselves.

TE People, critics.

DB Forget critics.

TE I don't forget them because I like to listen to what people have got to
say, and if people have a derogatory point of view about what I do then I want
to hear why. I'm interested. And if, you know, 'How long can she keep churning
this sort of stuff out for?' - it's obvious.

DB (chuckles) Yes, the longevity bit.

TE Yeah, it's obvious, I'll keep doing it until I die. Cause my life keeps,
you know - and the other thing is, oh well she made all this work about how
hard life was, now what's she going to do, make work about jumping into rich
people's swimming pools with bottles of champagne?

DB What they're saying is how long will her work have currency.

TE Yeah.

DB I understand that. I could go off at a tangent here, because it is an interesting
point. I think you're not the only one that this happens to, I think there are
a lot of your particular generation who are now getting what 'we in the rock
industry' call a backlash. There's a feeling that if you sit on laurels, you
haven't got much more to give apart from the first statement, the first shock
or whatever, that there is no real ambition or desire among the YBAs to make
art. It's more about going to parties and being seen.

TE I think that comes through ignorance, because if people knew how fucking
hard we worked and the fact that I'm 34. This YBA thing is stupid. I'm a 34-year-old
woman. And I haven't actually ever sacrificed anything in my life, but I've
worked really hard at what I believe in, to do what I believe in. It's not a
whim. It isn't just a little bit of a fashion thing. And when my work ceases
to have currency, I'm not gonna stop doing it. But that's just me actually,
I can - I'm in a privileged position because I'd like to write novels. At the
moment I'd like to have a radio show - that's what I'm interested in doing.
I don't see art as just a visual thing.

DB That's an interesting point though, Tracey. If you go ahead and do a radio
show, is it very important to you that the word art is attached to it?

TE Yeah, Tracey Emin, the artist, has her radio show.

DB Yes, but the thing itself, the event, is it important that it's considered
art? Is it not enough that Tracey Emin gets a radio show?

TE If I did a radio show I would actually say how the format of the radio show
is and the radio show would be more like a kind of sound piece.

DB So there's not going to be a sense of you doing a radio show like - 'I'm
doing a radio show', like in the 'ironic event'.

TE No, it wouldn't be ironic. It would be really sincere. Everything that I
do is totally sincere.

DB So it would be OK if people down the road said, 'Oh that artist is doing
a radio show' and didn't say, 'Have you heard of her latest art project - it's
a radio show'?

TE It would be that artist doing a radio show, yeah.

DB But it would be OK if it was thought it was merely a radio show? That they
didn't know it was art. That's OK, right?

TE Yes, it's absolutely fine by me. It's like that piece in Time Out. Time
Out did the seaside issue and sent me down to Margate or whatever, and there
it is -

DB - nice little picture.

[pagebreak]

TE Tracey in her bikini with the donkeys at Margate beach and a yes I've come
home kind of thing.

DB I thought that was lovely actually, it was very nice.

TE Yes, and that two pages that I had was like a piece of art to me, because
it was something fantastic to me.

DB So it's more important that you know it's art?

TE Yes.

DB It's not important that nobody else does?

TE No. It's like my birthday party, the Karaoke party. It got written about
in the press like it was the art event of the year. And it's just my fuckin'
birthday party. But just the way in which I do things, and my belief behind
things, the event of something happening, for me it feels like a fantastic piece
of art. The art of existence. The art of living, the art of being. And everyone
can do that.

DB Yeah.

TE And I think a lot of people in life have problems because they don't have
a door. They don't have a place to go and think freely and be true to themselves.

DB [I'm completely lost now as I'm not sure if the birthday party being written
up as an art event is a good thing or a bad thing]. It's much easier to be an
artist in Italy or France or even Germany, because the windows and doors thing
was broken down a lot earlier than it was in England.

TE Yes.

DB I think the idea of doors as being a way into new perceptions was accepted
a lot earlier on the continent than it was in Britain. That's the one place
where we really lagged behind.

TE But I'm not Anglo-Saxon. I think part of the problem is - this is going
to sound so terrible - but it's a bit of a class thing really. You know. Is
that I've had to battle hard to get into college and do the things I've done
and be taken seriously.

DB Well, it seemed it was only in the '60's that a few working class lads were
allowed to be artists. It's a recent phenomenon.

TE That's because of the conscription thing. 'What would you have done if you
hadn't been conscripted'? 'Oh, I would have gone to art school'.

DB Where do you see yourself in ten years?

TE Ooh, I've changed my mind about that because I used to imagine that I wouldn't
be here and be quite romantic about it.

DB The Baudelaire gag?

TE Something like that - become part of the sun or something. But now I'm feeling
pretty good, that I've never been very good at conforming and becoming part
of society.

DB NO!! Oh really?

TE Yeah, really!!. I've always felt that I was somehow outside of it. Well,
I don't really want this to be in print but++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DB OK - we'll leave that alone.

TE They were asking me questions like: 'Is it art'? And I was saying 'Well,
if it isn't art what are you doing sitting talking to me about it for?' It's
obvious that it's art. If it's not art what the hell is it doing in an art gallery
and why are people coming to look at it? I mean people don't just sit around
and say to Jarvis [Cocker, lead singer of the band Pulp] 'is this music?'

DB Let's think of somebody else. I know what you mean, but you need somebody..

TE Well let's think of somebody experimental.

DB John Cage is the perfect example. Or even early Velvet Underground when
they were just making noises [taps cutlery!]...but is it music?

TE Well is it art? Music is art anyway. Music 's the highest form of art, isn't
it?

DB It'll make a grown man swoon.

TE But they're people who spend all their lives in the New Forest painting
horses. They're not artists. They're picture makers. It's more like a craft,
or a trade or whatever, it's an industry of sorts.

DB You're saying facility with technique produces craftsmen rather than artists.

TE Brilliant example here. Finnegans Wake.

DB Yeah! Um. Art, as far as I'm concerned.

TE William Burroughs

DB Both

TE Those were the great ones. But you get others and they write books and novels
all their lives and they don't actually create absolute masterpieces.

Iman Joan Collins (chuckles)

TE Joan Collins, yeah.

Iman She wrote a book and was sued. They wanted the money back because they
said it was so bad. But she won. They didn't say it had to be good. (all laugh)

TE Going back to the idea of alchemy in the true sense of art, something magical
happens between the mind and hand in the presence of the making of it.

DB And that's what Turner touched on because he did something else other than
just - his so called realistic paintings were imbued with a metaphysical subtext
that gave them...that made them much more than what they were. I mean those
things actually struggle to free themselves from their frames. They're so powerful.

TE View it with a magnifying glass as well.

DB It's quite touching that there is still a spiritual fetishism attached to
owning art. All art. Everything - there's something about it, even the real
superstitious act of some collectors I know who will kind of buy stuff hoping
that if they stand close enough to it some of the transcendent perception will
rub off on them. You know there's that feeling when people go and see the Book
of Kells, or the Mona Lisa, and get near it, that something special will happen
to them. It's the martyrs-relic syndrome.

TE Well, I know definitely with my work it's the experience the viewer goes
through looking at it that's important. And I once had this idea that things,
visually, were important, but not as important as the essence of where it's
coming from in the first place. Loads of people can make work that looks like
mine, but it won't be the same will it?

DB Well I should hope not. Would you allow that people would follow in your
tradition?

TE Teaching. I teach at colleges and there's a lot of people who are doing
my kind of thing.

DB How do you feel about that.

TE Uhm. OK. 'Cause they'll grow out of it, won't they, and get their own style.

DB I'll see to them.

TE I'll sort that one out.

DB Just leave that one to me. Isn't it rather nice to think that you've contributed
to what they'll become?

TE Yeah, well when I went into colleges I'd remember that I'm talking to someone
who's fifteen years younger than me and there's quite a lot of difference at
that age. Can't even talk about art, we're talking about shoes and things.

DB Frequently I'm talking to kids 30 years younger! Can you imagine that. You
know it's quite astonishing. Some bands I've talked to think of Scary Monsters
[1980] as my first album. Mostly young American bands though. But it's satisfying...it's
a different feeling to be older and to have actually kind of created a certain
environment with your work.

TE Well it's still some years away, but I'd quite like to be an old woman and
have students come in for tea with me in the afternoon.

DB I can tell you who you could do that with right now, the next time you go
to the States, but you'd better be fast because she's getting up there. Louise
Bourgeois, down in the Village.

TE I was being interviewed and I was saying that I would like to meet her.
I just bet she's - have you met her?

DB It's one of the things Iman and I are going to do when we get back to New
York next time. She's very old now. Her last show in Milan was stunning. Absolutely
fantastic.

TE When you look at her work, you don't think that this has been made by somebody
who's 90, you've got no idea. Even in her old work you have no idea when she
made it.

DB The guns of the twentieth century. The Duchamps, the Burroughses, the Louise
Bourgeoises, Picassos.

TE I don't like Picasso.

DB Oh, come on. His adventurousness and his pure playfulness, right up to the
day he died, that aspect of him - it was phenomenal.

TE Yeah

DB You're probably a Duchamp school person if any...

TE Well not really, I'm more into...

DB I know. Munch.

TE I'm Munch. My man Munch.

DB You're more Munch than Duchamp. My man Munch. There's a book for you.

TE Yves Klein.

DB Yeah, he's great. I love his work.

TE He died when he was twenty-eight.

DB What is it about twenty-eight-year-old dead artists? That was kind of sad.
I mean he really should have carried on working and not given up the ghost,
because he was terrifically talented.

TE Maybe he thought he had gone as far as he could go. But when it's time to
go it's time to go.

DB I don't know.

TE Don't you think so?

DB Not for me. It's so fickle, Tracey. I'm so glad that I survived any of those
things myself. I'm having such a great time now. And when I think how long ago
it was that I was twenty-eight.

TE So how old were you in '73?

DB About twenty-six

TE Twenty-six - wow.

DB We've covered a lot of ground actually. Oh, you said one thing last night
- going back to something we've already talked about to a certain extent. One
of the reasons that you destroyed your work was that your painting would never
get you sitting down talking to me or being on the television.

[pagebreak]

TE What I said to you was if I hadn't destroyed the paintings then I wouldn't
be here sitting talking to you now, would I?

DB And I meant to follow that up with, is what you do, therefore, a means to
an end?

TE Yeah, definitely

DB So it's anything for the result?

TE No, because I'm doing it for genuine reasons. I don't know what the end
is, do I? But I know what I've done in the past makes sense to the point where
I am now, because otherwise I would have always been surrounded by these not
very good paintings. I'd go to the studio, I'd just walk in and would want to
make something beautiful by the end of the day, and I would have failed all
the time and I'd feel depressed and depressed and feeling like a failure. So
I decided to stop because I didn't really have the heart in me, but if I hadn't
done that seven years ago, you know, eight years ago, I swear I wouldn't be
doing all the things that I do now. I wouldn't have valued...it's almost like
denying in life what you're naturally good at.

DB Yes (laughs). I'll stick with Expressionism then - I'm good at that. I can
tell you 'Oh, I can do you any number of Heckels'.

TE Yeah, I'll knock off a Heckel for you.

DB I did knock off a Kirchner for somebody, they wanted a...

TE Oh, I like Kirchner.

DB Yeah, he's good, he's fun to paint as well. I did a couple actually. For
somebody who really loved him. I did them as a present one Christmas.

TE But people like you with your painting, it's for your pleasure kind of thing,
whereas with your music it's like you're always pushing, pushing, pushing, never
satisfied. Whereas with the painting it's just a really personal thing. It's
like you having a dialogue with yourself.

DB Not proper art? And shouldn't be shown? I'm very into the visual stuff that
I make. I'm quite purposeful about the stuff that I make and do. I've got another
show coming up in March. My ninth in two years.

TE Where?

DB Oh, Marconi in Milan. Three or four floors of it.

TE It's not - is that his dad? Is it Joe Marconi?

DB Yeah. It's the same gallery.

TE Joe Marconi?

DB Yeah, Joe Marconi.

TE Oh, 'cause I met him.

DB Yes, he's lovely.

TE He's got a swimming pool as well.

DB Uh?

TE He's got a swimming pool.

DB Yeah. Well, whatever.

TE In Milan. Yes this is really interesting because when I met him, he said,
'if you'd be interested in doing something with me...' And I said, 'Well I'm
interested in going shopping in Milan' - let's get our priorities sorted out.
So the idea is like go to Milan and go shopping and stay over and use his pool.

DB Yes, well, I'm more interested in his gallery. Milan's a long way for a
swim isn't it? Give me some quick one-liners. You don't have to if you don't
want to.

TE Good, I like one-liners.

DB Bridget Riley.

TE Appears to be a good woman.

DB Glenn Brown and appropriation, I suppose.

TE I think he's probably one of the best in his field.

DB These are very personal I suppose. Gillian and Sarah. Shall I separate the
two? Is it unfair to put the two...

TE Yes, it's unfair

DB Gillian

TE Exceptionally close good friend whom I've been friends with for years and
years and she became friends with me at a time when people wouldn't touch me
with a barge-pole.

DB Wyndham Lewis.

TE I always thought he was a bit of a fascist. BD Chapman brothers (laughs).

TE Individually, they're really crap artists but together they do pretty good,
I think.

DB Do they now? Not as morally repugnant as Balthus for instance?

TE They don't - their work to me is like fun really. I know you like their
thing, their 'Devils at Wars' - when they did their Goya stuff - but now I just
think they have a lot of fun together.

DB Children with mutant genitals?

TE I actually don't really want to think about that too much. But I'll tell
you one thing about them. Exceptionally generous, when it came to the ICA auction.
Yes, Generous people. Generous spirited.

DB (Laughs) Mark Quinn.

TE I respect him immensely for giving up drinking, and I really, really like
Mark. I think he's a great person.

DB What do you think of the work?

TE Some of Mark's work I like. I really liked his exploding bread pieces that
he cast in bronze - baroque and crazy. I was in Amsterdam when he was showing
those in the Hilton, I thought they were really good. I don't like all Mark's
work, but I think...

DB I'm also an admirer. I think it's looking fairly conservative, his work,
recently.

TE I think in a way Mark's work always has been.

DB Antony Gormley.

TE Antony is the most loveliest, generous, talk-a-holic person I've ever met
in my fucking life. And I like his concrete castings best.

DB What do you think of - I personally think that it's one of the most spiritually
uplifting sculptures produced this decade - Case for an Angel? Do you know that
one?

TE Oh, that one. No, I much prefer things when they're not so figurative. When
they're much more...actually like the concrete cube things.

DB Don't you think they're a bit '60's Nauman. Knees of Five Famous Artists,
for instance. Nauman stuff?

TE Well, I...

DB I mean, I'd say that piece of work and most of Rachel Whiteread's stuff
is no more than Bruce Nauman, but bigger. Whiteread's Oasis to Nauman's Beatles.
It was already there in Cast of the Space under My Chair [a 1965 Nauman sculpture].

TE Why don't you ask me what I think of Bruce Nauman then?

DB What do you think of Bruce Nauman then?

TE Fucking brilliant.

DB True.

TE Yeah. One of the top artists..

DB Top man.

TE Top man, yes - no, brilliant artist. Fantastic. He's influenced so many
people...and I bet he's really good fun as well.

DB He's great fun.

TE Yeah, I've never met him, but I bet he's great fun.

DB I met him last year. He's 'Stetsony' - you know, jeans and jacket with fringes.
Yeah, he's a cowboy. He's like a...Clint Eastwoody kinda guy. A very down to
earth guy.

TE I like cowboys. Sarah Lucas? Partner in crime.

DB Yeah, Sarah Lucas. Partner in crime. Is that it?

TE Yeah.

DB Hume?

TE Gary's a fucking good painter. Gary Hume is the only art I have up in my
home. A Gary Hume painting. It's the only thing I've got. I've got nothing else
on the walls.

DB That's interesting. Which one?

TE It's a small one. It's really small, it looks like a really weird flower.

DB I thought it might be.

TE But it's not a flower, but it looks like a flower. And it's the only thing
I've got up on the wall. When Gary gave it to me I started crying I was so touched.
I have a piece of work by Mat Collishaw which is on the floor which is a mirror
with...scratched beneath the mirror is the face of a Neanderthal man which really
looks like Mat. That's good. I've got work, but I've got videos as well - I've
got a video by Lisa Maypost, one by Georgina - and videos are easier for me
to collect, because I don't have to have them up on the walls or anything.

DB Clive Barker.

TE I don't know who Clive Barker is.

DB Colin Self.

TE I don't know who Colin Self is either. Is that the right answers?

DB Oh no, it's fine (laughs)...they're interesting people. They might be people
you'd like to look at. Clive Barker and Colin Self are two guys who came out
of the '60's. Clive Barker cast six hand-grenades in bronze and then tried to
take them through customs.

TE I came through customs the other week from Nuremberg with my tent, and they
said, 'What've you got there?' they said 'Where did you come from, did you come
from Egypt?' And I said, 'No I've come from Nuremberg'. They went 'Oh!, and
what've you got there?' I said, 'A tent'. They said, 'What kind of tent'. I
said, 'It's my art, it's my tent'. They said, 'Do you want to show it to us?'
And I said, 'Well no, not really, but I'll tell you exactly what's on it. It's
the names of everyone I've ever slept with from 1963-1995. If you want me to
open it up I will'.

DB They must have loved that.

TE It was funny, yeah.

DB But, Barker actually had his hand-grenades in his case and they were going
through and it comes up on the television screen...there's guns everywhere.
Angus Fairhurst.

TE I love Angus...I like his band Low Expectations, and I love his drawings.

DB How are they, Low Expectations?

TE They're pretty low. Don't have any expectations about them.

DB Is this his band?

TE Yeah, but once me and Angus were talking about bringing a fish, a live fish,
in a bag, and taking it through customs. And they go, 'What's in your bag?'
and you say 'It's a fish', and when you take the fish out all you have is a
bone. I don't know why we found it so amusing. [my wife re-enters the room.
It's my siesta time. A pre-show habit I've adopted since being with Iman.]

DB Well I'm off for a kip then.

TE Can you fall asleep? It's terrible when you're excited and you can't fall
asleep. Do you take anything?

DB No. I seem to have that together. Well, young Tracey, I expect you to be
able to write perfectly in Celt the next time I see you. You know one of the
first things Iman made for me - the first time that I did something with Damien?
She did his lamb in a box. She needle pointed it from a drawing that I made
and I've got a little tapestry. It's so beautiful.

TE It's better than the lamb in a box.

DB The irony is of course that it's made in wool. I mean it's so delightful.
All the cold context gone. It's just this pretty little picture, in wool.