In 2005, Art Review published a list of the 100 most powerful people in the art world. In the top 30, there was only one woman – and she was a collector and not an artist.
This seemed to confirm a notion that Britain's most famous female artist, Tracey Emin, has had for some time: that no matter how acclaimed and apparently successful a woman artist can be, her work will almost always sell for less than her male counterparts.
In this film, Tracey Emin investigates if there are specific reasons for this – whether cultural, social, economic or artistic. But the documentary also goes further. It looks into the lives and work of some of the world's most famous female artists, from the present and the recent past, and at what sacrifices and life choices they might have made for their success.
Do their relationships suffer? Do they have to choose between family and art? Are these the choices that all successful women have to make, not simply artists?
Finally, Tracey reflects on her own life to this point and the extent to which, in early middle age, she has made sacrifices for her art.
Throughout the film, Tracey is looking for hard facts as much as personal testimony - and she gets these from Oliver Baker at Sothebys who is unafraid to state actual prices for much of the great art of today and the recent past. But this film is not simply a cold survey of female relegation in a male-dominated art market but an exploration into the life choices that women artists make – and whether these choices are the same for the artists of today, including Tracey, as they were for the great women artists of the past.
What Price Art? will be shown on C4: Wednesday, 15th March at 11.05pm