No napping: Tracey Emin’s messy bed goes on display at London’s Tate Modern

By Jill Lawless, The Associated Press

LONDON – The world’s most famous messy bed has gone on display at London’s Tate Modern gallery, complete with a security system to deter would-be sleepers.

Tracey Emin’s “My Bed” — a mess of disheveled sheets, empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts and discarded condoms — was one of the landmarks of the Young British Artist movement that shook up the art world in the 1990s.

Emin, who created the work during a period of depression after a relationship breakdown, wiped away tears as she posed with it Monday at the gallery. She said much in her life had changed since then and now “I make my bed every day.”

“There are so many things about that bed that don’t relate to my life anymore,” Emin said. “It’s a time capsule of a woman living in the 1990s in a really wild way.”

She said the work, created in sadness, was “about being in the worst situation in your life and being able to pull through and get out to the other side.”

“My Bed” sold at auction last year for 2.54 million pounds ($3.8 million) to German industrialist Christian Duerckheim. He has loaned it to the Tate for at least 10 years.

It goes on display to the public Tuesday, alongside two paintings by Francis Bacon and six nude drawings by Emin.

When it was first exhibited in 1998, the bed provoked both praise and disgust — and prompted two guerrilla artists to stage a pillow fight among the sheets.

It is now protected by a guard and a sensor has been installed to prevent visitors from getting too close.

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