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BEATS OF LOVE 

180. Tracey Emin: a second life  & Nigerian Modernism: art and independence

A TATE double-header began with the predictably packed blockbuster Emin exhibition.

No sooner are you in than a big screen recounts her teenage time in Margate. I'd seen excerpts of Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995) on the South Bank show and felt the revenge footage a little hollow in its mockery. I still do. 

She was the most endearing YBA artist, the one we could relate to. And it was a blessed relief to reach My Bed (1998), the most compelling conceptual self portrait bar none and the reason for her lasting infamy. Everything else was a little less tender than I'd hoped and less fearless. That said, not taken on standalone merit but shot through the prism of a personality cult, the work is engaging and not without reverence.

The effect was that when I visited my favourite spiritual space, Rothko's Seagram Murals (1958-59), I was a little less transported than usual. Fortunately, I immersed myself in Nigerian Modernism after a strong coffee a little later. Art that added to a pro-independence fervour that I'd seen in books suddenly had more vibrancy and purpose scaled up.

The Zaria Arts Society room, a melting pot of learning and leisure, is wild. The Black Orpheius magazines look so now but it's the paintings which radiate the colourful essences of a nightlife that first introduced us to Fela and the original fat bottomed girls. Whilst Ben Enwonwu's impressive room contained the expressive and dizzyingly rhythmic Monotony (1948), causing me to enthuse, I had to listen to the missus, who most admired the work of Nike Davies-Okundaye. 

It's fitting that, as the Tate double-header ended, this trailblazing woman who valued the workshop culture of passing on folklore tradition should reverberate around my head, reminding me of Emin's textile-influenced work. While vastly different mediums and cultural contexts, their work is highly personal and evocative. Both are part taught but self-developed, which is why they're so original, I guess. 

Their motifs hold personal significance and are not merely decorative. European tutors encouraged a self-expression of style, which makes a work like Davies-Okundaye ultra vivid The Finger that Feeds Never Lacks (1979) so unique. Created long after the tutors had fled the civil war of the late sixties, it epitomises a constant need to create inherent in nearly all artists. 

Davies-Okundaye helped charge Emin's work with much more emotion. Something that only happened on the tube, reflecting.