Tracey EminHay Pretty Girl Don't Die Now Your Too Fucking Beautiful

PROVENANCE

Sale: Sotheby's New York, March 3, 2016.

The date of the work is of particular significance as it coincides with her infamous My Bed, certainly the artist's best known and most iconic works.

The visiualization of the vacuousness of her personal life in the form of her unmade bed, littered with the fetid detritus of her dysfunctional lifestyle (condoms, vodka bottles, soiled underwear, etc) marked the point at which the artist decided to go no further. Putting the work on public display in the Turner Prize exhibition at the end of 1998 proved to be a masterstroke for the artist's career. She played out the shame of her personal life in the most public setting of all, and the ridicule and humiliation she received from the public actually served to resurrect her personal strength and self-belief. It was and continues to be an extraordinarily brave work of art, one for which she is still much-loved.

'Hay Beautiful' was produced at the same time as 'My Bed' , and is therefore to be considered from the series of monoprinted works she also exhibited at the Tate exhibition in 1999 (although it was not included in the show itself). Her use of calico is unusual for this time, and it adds another layer of poignancy given that the fabric is a cheap rather coarse alternative to cotton, originally produced by impoverished weavers in Southern India.