One Thousand Drawings

Tracey Emin has stirred controversy as well as acclaim since she rose to fame as the most highly publicized of the infamous Young British Artists. Though denounced by conservative critics at the outset, Emin’s work has attracted serious critical attention since the early 1990s for being consistently engaging, original, and startlingly direct. Her work has succeeded over the years in many media—from films to appliques, embroideries, and installations—but it is in her works on paper that the honesty and frankness that have come to characterize her work are most fully realized. Edited by the artist herself from an archive of work stretching back before the beginnings of her career in the late 1980s, A Thousand Drawings is at once a collection of Emin’s works on paper, an expose of her life as an artist, and a collectible artifact in itself. Many of these works on paper shed light on well-known multimedia pieces, previously studied in Works 1963–2006, published by Rizzoli in 2006. Stripped of the distractions of form and context, her bare and enigmatic drawings are presented on bible-thin paper in a uniquely beautiful slipcased volume, with an introduction by the artist. From considered self-portraits to pen-and-ink drawings and informal studies on lined notebook paper, this remarkable collection is as much a catalogue of Emin’s preoccupations as it is a monument to her raw and evocative talents as an artist.

Tracey Emin was born in London in 1963. Nominated for the Turner Prize in 1999 and chosen to represent Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, Emin is also a member of the Royal Academy of Arts. The author of several books, including Strangeland, her memoir, she contributes regularly to The Independent newspaper and lives and works in London.