A German count has been revealed as the new owner of Tracey Emin’s infamous unmade bed — and he will lend it to the Tate.
Count Christian Duerckheim, an Anglophile industrialist and art collector, is finalising a long-term loan of the artwork, called My Bed, to the gallery, it was announced today.
Sir Nicholas Serota, Tate’s director, said: “I am absolutely delighted that Count Duerckheim has agreed to loan such an important work for a period of at least 10 years.
“We are most grateful to Count Duerckheim for his generosity in creating an opportunity for visitors to see a work that now has iconic status.”
Speculation on the future of the work had been rife since it was sold at auction at Christie’s earlier this month for £2.2 million. There were hopes that a wealthy philanthropist might have been behind the purchase with a view to donating it to Tate, where it was shown in 1999 as part of the Emin’s exhibition for the Turner Prize.
Jay Jopling, owner of White Cube, the gallery which represents Emin, made the successful bid at the auction and it was today revealed he was acting on behalf of Count Duerckheim. The 70-year-old count, who has been collecting art for 50 years, said: “I always admired the honesty of Tracey, but I bought My Bed because it is a metaphor for life, where troubles begin and logics die.” The work features an unmade bed and a floor littered with vodka bottles, cigarette butts, condoms and a blood-stained pair of knickers.
Emin created it in 1998 after a traumatic break-up and had been keen for it to stay in Britain. Charles Saatchi, who bought the work for £150,000 in 2000, sold it to raise money for his free Chelsea art gallery.
Count Duerckheim, who lived in London in the Sixties, was born in Bautzen in Germany in 1944 and became friends with leading artists including Georg Baselitz. Last December he gave 34 modern drawings by German artists including Baselitz, Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke to the British Museum in a gift which its director, Neil MacGregor, said transformed its modern German holdings.
“I always wanted to see the art of my time,” the count once said in an interview. “I’m interested in history.”
Full details of the return of My Bed, which is currently in Switzerland, will be announced in the autumn.