Displaying items by tag: my bed

The most famous bed in contemporary art, a tangle of stained and rumpled sheets bearing expensive witness to a time of heartbreak for the artist Tracey Emin, is coming to the Tate gallery on long loan from its new owner, the German businessman and collector Count Christian Duerckheim.

Although Emin described the Tate as "the natural home" for her 1998 "My Bed," the gallery couldn't afford to bid at the recent Christie's auction where it eventually sold for £2.54m, more than twice the top pre-sale estimate.

Tracey Emin’s bed, strewn with cigarette butts, discarded condoms and empty booze bottles, was among the top pieces at Christie’s 99.4 million-pound ($170.5 million) postwar and contemporary art sale in London yesterday.

The provocative British artist, 50, sat in the front of the packed salesroom as her 1998 piece, “My Bed,” surged from the opening bid of 650,000 pounds to the final price of 2.5 million pounds, including buyer’s commission. The result smashed her previous auction record of 481,875 pounds and more than doubled the expected high target of 1.2 million pounds.

“Not yours here, Tracey,” auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen said to the artist in jest as he wielded multiple bids from the podium.

 British collector Charles Saatchi will sell Tracey Emin’s iconic readymade, “My Bed,” on July 1 at Christie’s. The work, which is quite literally the artist’s unmade bed -- complete with empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts, and discarded undergarments -- carries a pre-sale estimate of £800,000 to £1.2 million, which many people feel is too low considering the piece’s storied past.

Emin was a founding member of the Young British Artists (YBAs), a group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in the late 1980s and favored everyday materials, shock tactics, and wild-living. Created in 1998 following a particularly low period in Emin’s life, “My Bed” earned a Turner Prize nomination in 1999, which sparked outrage among the art world. A year later, Saatchi purchased “My Bed” from Emin’s New York dealer, David Maupin, for £150,000, a hefty price tag at the time.