Ever stayed in bed for a week after a bad break up? Tracey did.

She stayed in bed for many days without eating or drinking anything but alcohol. So far nothing new, haven’t we all done something like that?

The thing that separates Tracey from us normal people is she made a fortune out of it. When she saw the mess she made of her bed she thought “hey, this is art!” Many critics were thoroughly grossed out. It was covered in bodily fluids, dirty underwear, condoms, cigarettes, and some less gross stuff like slippers and a bottle of Orangina. Besides thinking is was really nasty, most critics claimed anyone could exhibit an unmade bed. True that sir, but hey no-one did it before, did they? Critic Craig Brown wrote a piece on the bed for British satirical magazine Private Eye. His article had the incredibly hilarious title "My Turd." Also, Tracey’s ex-boyfriend Billy Childish offered an old bed which supposedly once belonged to Tracey for £20.000. I am sensing an liiiittle bit of jealousy in these gents!

The first time the bed was out in the public, it was on show in Japan. For that show she also included a noose hanging over the bed. By the time the bed was on show at Tate, because Tracey was nominated for the Turner prize, she had removed that creepy detail. She didn't win the Turner prize, but publicity-wise she was the big winner. Her face was all over the news and just because of her messy bed, Tate’s visitor numbers reached a record high. To make the piece even more exciting, artists Cai Yuan and Jian Jun Xi decided to take their clothes off and jump on the bed for a solid fifteen minutes, before being removed by security guards.

Shortly after the Turner show at Tate, Tracey's bed was sold for £150,000 (nowadays about $188,587) to famous collector Charles Saatchi. Story goes, at one time Charles had the bed on display in his dining room. Yummy! Recently the bed was up for sale again, but this time the sale opened at £650,000. After a bidding war, Count Christian Duerckheim bought for the bed for a whopping £2,546,500...about $3,201,587!

The Count did not displayed the bed in his dining room, but instead loaned the artwork to Tate. When you buy an artwork like this, everything is stored in little bags and containers. Anyone who installs the work has to unpack everything piece by piece. It’s kind of like unpacking dozens of very delicate Christmas presents, without tearing the paper. Tracey makes it a little easier on the installers by always making her own bed. Not sure if she does this at home as well, but every single time the bed get’s installed at a museum, she does it herself.