Editor's Letter
In this issue of Tate Etc. and you’ll be met with a picture of James McNeill Whistler ‘in all his doubleness’. Not only were mirrors and doubles key interests of Whistler’s age, but his portraits, writes novelist Colm Tóibín, exhibit a split sensibility – between reflecting his sitters’ likeness and reaching for an abstract harmony close to music.
A sense of double-perspective also shines through A Second Life, the most comprehensive exhibition to date of work by Tracey Emin, whose name is up in lights on our cover. Have a look at what four decades of tender, honest and emotionally raw expression looks like from the renewed viewpoint of the ‘second life’ she is living now.
Further on, we look back at an important eight-week experience in Trinidad, which has continued to tinge Hurvin Anderson’s paintings ever since; his guide to the island, Christopher Cozier, takes us on a trip down memory lane. Meanwhile, writer Nathalie Olah revisits the legacy of John Constable, reminding us that, while his landscapes are often associated with a nostalgic view of the past, he was anything but a chocolate box painter.
Throughout this issue, we’re invited to look forwards, then backwards, then forwards again. In the words of artist Emilija Škarnulytė, time might begin to feel ‘layered, circular, elastic'.
See you around,
Enrico Tassi
