Will Emin’s pink prose stand the test of time?
Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin has never shied away from bold statements. Now, the Royal Academician presents her boldest to date – a pink neon text work emblazoned across one of London’s historic railway stations.
Marking 150 years since St Pancras was built, and part of the Royal Academy’s celebrations for its 250th year, the artwork is the latest of the station’s Terrace Wires public art commissions. It consists simply of the words, “I want my time with You” and is 20m in length, hanging above the rear terrace of William Barlow’s magnificent Victorian engine shed.
As a romantic departure point the setting can hardly be beaten.
Say what you like about the Margate-raised artist, she has at least come up with a phrase capable of reaching into the imagination of the harassed, baggage-toting passenger rather than the clever-sounding but hollow philosophical homily that many neon artists might have devised.
But what does she mean by it? That she wants to spend some time with us? That she wants us to reflect on a life-changing moment of arrival or departure? No such luck. This being Emin it all goes solipsistically back to Emin herself, as she imagines “being met by someone I love at a train station and as they put their arms around me.” And who can blame her? Isn’t a railway station reunion the ultimate romantic moment?
The thing is, neon-strip lettering has become one of the most grossly over-used materials in contemporary art. Pioneered in the Seventies by Bruce Nauman, the American conceptual artist, it hit saturation point with Tracey Emin’s 2011 Hayward Gallery retrospective.
If it felt time for a moratorium, nevertheless the medium went from strength to strength, with a whole new school of artists peddling mostly lame, not-quite-art-not-quite-poetry in gleaming neon. Nathan Coley, Tim Etchells and Robert Montgomery were prime culprits – while Emin herself went on plugging this over-extended trope to the point of self-parody.
Standing beneath Emin’s work, which hangs as though floating about 10m in front of the end of the great hall, I was struck most by its relationship to the large clock – with the prominent trademark of its maker, Dent – that stands directly above it. “I Want My Time With You”: what a brilliant copy-line for any timepiece. If Emin had failed in art, she could have made a fortune in advertising.