This publication compares the two artists Tracey Emin and Richie Culver, both of whom deal with themes such as emotionality, authenticity, and gender images. The starting points are self-staging and public responses to Emin’s and Culver’s artistic work. How do culturally encoded emotions, autobiographical narratives, and gender images intertwine in the two oeuvres? Does Culver’s work reveal the appropriation of a previously female-encoded emotionality, or a shift towards a gender-neutral artistic identity? A comparative reading of their work highlights specific modes of self-presentation and affective addressing – in the field of tension between subjectivity, pop culture, and art-historical inscription. First academic monograph on Richie CulverShows the social relevance of the issues addressed, as well as the construction of emotions, gender and identity in the context of cultural and media upheavalInnovative gender-reflective perspective on artistic practice