The Art of Tracey Emin, ed. Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend

The art of a self-made icon

She's come a long way, has "Mad Tracey from Margate", the girl with "big tits" who bunked off school, shagged older men behind the beach huts, had an abortion or two and walked out of a TV interview, drunk. Not only does she make mucky beds for the Tate, turn up at private views dressed to kill in Vivienne Westwood, have a posh house round the corner from Gilbert and George, and appear on the cover of every glossy magazine. Now a clutch of critics and academics has written a book of essays about her. Soon there will be a university course in Tracey Studies and her transformation into cultural "icon" will be complete. Madonna watch out!

Like Princess Di, Emin has made a cult of victimhood and dysfunction. From poor-little-abused-girl she has reinvented herself as a superstar. Hers is an art for a TV generation hooked on celebrity and the voyeurism of Big Brother.

Her detractors talk of "high art lite" but, as with Diana, it is her artful ambiguity that makes her hard to dismiss. She has made folksy tents hand-sewn with the names of everyone she has slept with in dyslexic mirror script, and hysterical videos about her abortions. But she has also made wonderfully nervy drawings and monoprints that owe their spirit to the Expressionism of Munch, the transgressive sexuality of Egon Schiele, and the man who once said "anyone could be an artist", Joseph Beuys.

One of the delights of this book is watching academics' ability to tie themselves in knots and turn anything into critical discourse. Many might consider Ulrich Lehmann's essay a prime candidate for Pseuds Corner. He cites not only Baudelaire, but Freud and Wittgenstein's Tractus, which seems a rather big hammer to crack an easy nut.

Much more resonant is Jennifer Doyle's essay, which examines Emin's work in the context of first-wave feminists such as Judy Chicago and Cindy Sherman and talks of the blurred boundaries between "Emin's person, her work and her public persona". Or the late Lorna Healy's essay, explaining how Emin uses "pop-cultural strategies" in videos to seduce fans, who shout out "I love you Tracey" when they see her. It's hard to imagine anyone doing that for Frank Auerbach.

Healy asserts that her audience responds to Emin's powerful mixture of vulnerability and assertiveness. They want to "be" her, empathise with her "wounded" psyche. One of the problems is that viewers, in this age of therapy, have an inability to discern the elision between the constructed "narrative" of Emin's oeuvre and her tear-stained autobiographical "disclosures".

There is no doubt that her work is narcissistic. Her anarchic desire to "épater les bourgeois" begins to seem rather disingenuous as she moves towards middle age. But her art is born out of a society where few are rewarded for their philosophical insights or their craft, but rather for the exposure of anorexic angst or exploits in the Oval Office. Exhibitionism is the new Expressionism.

Beuys was wrong; not anyone can be an artist. But as Monica, Vanessa, Diana and now Tracey demonstrate, anyone can be a star.