#OnThisDay

On July 2 2014 Tracey Emin’s My Bed sold at Christie’s in London for £2.2m. First created in Waterloo council flat in 1998, the bed, consisting of box frame, mattress, bed linens, pillows, and with associated bedroom objects was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1999. Inspired by the artist’s own relationship breakdown, the instillation shocked the art world. The tantalising, uncompromising and tangible statement of the unkempt bed, surrounded by its detritus of everyday life, provided a stark window on confessional art, female sexuality and conformity, or rather a lack of it. My Bed is both birth and death, love and loss, childhood and emergence. The empty bed, the crumpled sheets, the stained mattress, the desolation that speaks of tragedy, it is pure Shakespeare, here coyness is lost, the raw emotion is all that is left.

Listen to the unexpected history of the bed!

Or why not check out our magazine post on the bed in World War One!

Or perhaps a peek at Samuel Pepys’s private life via the marital bed!