It was a given that the critics would indulge in emotional onanism when they covered the Tracey Emin retrospective at the Tate Modern – apt enough when you consider the sexual content of so much of it. But what surprised me was that it wasn’t just women. For the art is almost entirely about Being Tracey: her abortions, her sexual abuse as a teenager by horrible men, her diaries, her cancer with pictures of the bloody stoma, her famous unmade bed, with its used condoms, granny slippers and teddy (it sold in 2014 for £2.5 million) and her death mask, which was done in life … obviously. That, you might have thought, would put off the men. 

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Certainly, women rallied round Tracey, with one critic on Radio 4 recalling that Tracey’s reaction to her abortion was absolutely hers. A Times columnist observed that she was the role model Gen Z needs. The Guardian reviewer declared: ‘Parts of this show left me in bits. The painting of her carrying her mum’s ashes totally broke me and left me missing my own mum, who died just before the pandemic. I was a teary wreck, it was overwhelming. It must be exhausting being Tracey. I couldn’t feel this intensely all the time, I’ve got to function and send emails and go to Tesco.’ 

But it wasn’t just the........

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