Emin to Collectors: Do You Believe in God? By Sarah Douglas
Collectors who find themselves in a confessional mood when they hit London's Frieze Art Fair, which runs October 15–18 in a tent in Regent's Park, will want to sprint to the booth of New York's Lehmann Maupin Gallery, where YBA Tracey Emin, perhaps best known for her super confessional artwork Everyone I've Ever Slept With, is offering to make them customized artworks based on their answers to fifteen rather, ahem, personal questions.
To be fair, some of Emin's queries address downright commonplace topics (#14: Antique or contemporary? Fireplace or radiator?) but the lion's share are blush-worthy (#8: Passion — Romance or hard core sex?; #11: Do you talk when you make love?). But perhaps the most provocative question — and potentially the most zeitgeisty, given the recent works of atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens — is the first: Do you believe in God?
Completing Emin's questionnaire, and shelling out £65,000 ($104,129), will get collectors a customized version of one of Emin's signature neon text pieces, previous examples of which have featured such titillating phrases as "People like you need to fuck people like me." (A £10,000 ($16,000) deposit buys a drawing that serves as a study.) Usually Emin's neons are in editions of three, but these will — suitably, since they are inspired by the proclivities of individuals – be unique.
