I Fell in Love by Tracey Emin
At this year’s ADAA: The Art Show fair, Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present a solo exhibition of sculpture and painting by artist Tracey Emin, centered around her new bronze The Heart Has Its Reasons (2014).
The Heart Has Its Reasons takes inspiration from Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss (1787-1793), a sculpture by Antonio Canova. Emin recalls purchasing a small plaster sculpture at a local flea market on her 50th birthday, unaware that it was a reproduction of Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss. The next day she received a card that featured an image of the same work of art. This coincidence, and subsequent revelation of the flea market sculpture’s identity, compelled Emin to produce The Heart Has Its Reasons.
The artist has described the work in the following way:
“Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss is often used to illustrate limerence; the state of unattainable love. The title of the sculpture The Heart has its Reasons is from Blaise Pascal who said, ‘The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart.’ This is something I really relate to and through a strange course of events have created a piece of work about this in circumstances that I never would have expected.” (2014)
Lehmann Maupin will also have a booth (1000) at The Armory Show, running concurrently from March 5-8, 2015 at Pier 94 in New York.