Uninformed Art Analysis: My Bed By Tracey Emin

The uninformed art viewer is faced with a dilemma. With expectations to be amazed by the skill and prowess of today’s artists in the gallery setting, this viewer instead observes what they assume to be nothing but an unkempt bed, plopped in the center of the gallery. Immediately confusing thoughts rush the individual’s mind: This is art? What makes this art?; I rolled out of one of these this morning. My Bed (1998), the sculpture by Tracey Emin, is the aforementioned catalyst in provoking these questions which are essential to art and art’s meaning. The work consists of the artist’s messy bed, complete with bloodstains, disheveled sheets and littered with traces of the artist—her dirty underwear, empty bottles of liquor, used condoms and smashed cigarette boxes (Wallace). The work serves to document a distinct, dark time the artist has

By contrast Johns carefully crafted things that, upon first glance, would appear to be “readymade” art but were, in fact, genuinely handmade (Genocchio) and built up by artistic processes. For example, Johns’ 1960 work titled Painted Bronze presents the viewer with two bronze cast cans of Ballantine Ale set on a thin, shelf like base (Feinstein 3). From a distance, the viewer cannot be sure if the cans are taken from the ordinary world and reappropriated into the art world vis-à-vis Duchamp, or if they were manufactured as a result of artistic process, a signature of Johns. Upon further inspection of the work, the brushstrokes on the label become evident, and the viewer becomes certain that this is a handmade item made to look like a commercial product; almost the reverse effect of a Duchamp readymade. Duchamp thought the painting of the cans as “absolutely mechanical” because of his attitude toward painting (Miller 22), but Johns was primarily a