Gilbert & George
Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore met at Saint Martin’s College in 1967 and have been working together as the artist Gilbert and George ever since. It is difficult to state their medium precisely; while they are perhaps known for their distinctive photography work (high contrast collages, blending grey-scale with bright primary colors), they have also made a performance out of their daily life. They refer to themselves as ‘living sculptures’ and wear the same suits every day, eat at the same restaurant every night, and insist that while they are two people, they create as one artist. In interviews they interrupt each other until the effect is of a tennis match, the same ball in motion as it floats from side to side.
Evidence of this blurring of the lines between production of art and practice of daily living can be seen in their early performance piece, “Singing Sculpture.” Dressed in suits and coated in bronze, the two men stand on a pedestal and mouth along to a tape recorder playing an old fashioned English song. This performance, done while they were still students at Saint Martins, offers a good example of the themes and techniques which will inform much of their later work: an interest in combining life and performance, a preoccupation with signifiers of “Britishness” such as fine suits and nostalgic music, the impact of the presence of bodies, and a cheeky resistance to what they consider an esoteric and unapproachable art world.
Since their college days, the artists have lived together in London’s East End, where they have a reputation both as one of the art world’s greatest love stories (they were married in 2008, largely as a practical legal matter) and as neighborhood eccentrics, easily recognizable on their daily walks. The East End, known today both as a multicultural area of the city and as a haven for artists (with all the tensions and questions about gentrification that that duality implies) has a prominent influence on the work of Gilbert & George.
Themes of different cultures and bodies often appear in their work. From a certain perspective Gilbert & George seem committed to interrogating questions of English nationalism. For example, their Jack Freak Pictures series depicts the Union Jack through a variety of distortions, seeking to make it strange.
In other contexts, their attention to bodies and cultures can be more ambiguous. They have drawn criticism from the left for their depiction of colored bodies. For example, a photograph from 1986 shows the pair, saturated in red, with an Asian man standing between them; the photo is labelled “Paki.” The political implications are unclear, although Gilbert & George, dressed in their dapper suits, are looking at the man with expressions of disdain.
Often Gilbert & George seem less interested in making coherent statements with their art, focusing instead on two goals: provoking emotional responses with their photo collages, and dedicating the daily practices of their lives to a series of often ascetic rituals. These goals can sometimes find themselves in opposition to each other, as shown in the following two examples.
Large images of women dressed in niqabs, surrounded by bottles of laughing gas which resemble bombs, seem dedicated to provoke and shock. A quote emblazoned on the wall at one of their exhibits reads “We want our art to: bring out the bigot from inside the liberal and conversely to bring out the liberal from inside the bigot.” While the revelation of the bigot within the liberal could be part of a larger project of emancipation, there is a dislike of religion which often surfaces in the work of Gilbert & George.
Their Banners series features provocative slogans such as “Ban Religion” and “Fuck the Planet.” Regarding their art aimed at criticizing religion, Gilbert & George tell the story of a vicar who knocked on their door: “He loved the ‘ban religion’ one, and said: ‘I would love to put it up in my church. I have a congregation, a big congregation who are very nice people and they’re all very religious but I don’t want them to be religious. I want them to be good.”
There is a desire to tap into an underlying humanity that informs much of their work; it is helpful to keep in mind that Gilbert & George define themselves in opposition to the abstract, less human artistic culture which reigned supreme at the time of their schooling. In conversation with Slava Mogutin, the pair says of their art that “we make a kind of moralogue: good people, bad people, what should be changed, sexuality, unhappiness, drunkenness, religion, politics — all included, all what’s inside human beings, not the abstract art that doesn’t offend anybody.” This humanism, an attempt to capture the natural and unadulturated human experience, stands in sharp contrast to the pair’s rules for their lifestyle, as detailed in their 1969 manifesto The Law of Sculptors:
- Always be smartly dressed, well groomed relaxed friendly polite and in complete control.
2. Make the world believe in you and to pay heavily for this privilege.
3. Never worry assess discuss or criticize but remain quiet respectful and calm.
4. The Lord chisels still, so don’t leave your bench for long.
The demand for complete control seems in contrast to their stated views on humanity, but this contradiction is essential for their work. It is for this reason that their most effective pieces often feature the pair themselves prominently displayed, calling attention to the unresolvable tension between the artist and that which they portray.
