Still in recovery from cancer, the artist has moved home with plans to open an art school, launch a catering college, and even spruce up the streets. She talks about her new sense of freedom – and the pain that infused her latest devastating nudes
Tracey Emin is curled up on the red sofa of her new home in Margate, with her kittens Teacup and Pancake lolling beside her. “Some critic,” she tells me, “said I was influenced by Matisse. I said, ‘Oh, you mean because of this?’” She raises her right hand and places it behind her neck, adopting the posture of Matisse’s famous Blue Nude. “And I asked, ‘Are you saying that Matisse owns the way that women sit?’”
It can certainly feel that way, given the propensity of female nudes in Matisse’s oeuvre. The same could be said of Picasso, Botticelli and Titian, too. But Emin is now seeking to take back this territory – in spectacular fashion. “The nude, the naked female body, is the big picture,” she says. “It’s archetypal, everybody understands it. It’s like a cave drawing.”
