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.
