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Gilbert & George
 In 1989, Gilbert & George were honored with a
major retrospective at he Guggenheim Museum in New York, had a one-day
sale of their paintings that raised nearly a million dollars for
A.I.D.S. research, and began working on 44 new pieces to be installed
in Moscow this April. After 20 years of taking risks and breaking
barriers, Gilbert & George are the brightest stars in the art
world.
Of their celebrity status, the Italian-born Gilbert
raises his brows and inquires, "Do we have one?"
"We lead the quietest life of anyone we know,"
insists George, between drags on a cigarette. "We’re always
in the same street, for months."
"Miserable, alone at home," Gilbert murmurs
with a doe-eyed deadpan.
In an age where artists have agents and publicists,
chattering fax machines and talk show appearances, Gilbert and George
are an impossible anachronism. Admittedly square, they enjoy near-seclusion
in their antique-filled home in London’s Brook Lane district,
"the Calcutta of England." They don’t have a kitchen.
They haven’t gone to a movie since 1979 — "It was
getting too expensive," reasons Gilbert — and they travel
only when absolutely necessary. "A couple of weeds outside
in a puddle, that’s more than enough," suggests George,
contrasting the traditional image of an English garden. "That’s
the whole world there anyway, hmmm?"
It’s hard to conceive of artistic geniuses sounding
so banal, but Gilbert & George focus their concerns on the work
itself. "We don’t like anything," George admits.
"We work all the time, we like to feel the world all the time.
We know that we’re being dragged at this increasing speed towards
the grave and we want to make a contribution, a change in morality."
"Art is moving and changing the world because
it’s all artificial," says Gilbert. "We don’t
know what God is; we just create a new idea from reality every day."
Their long and unlikely collaboration began in London
in 1967, when they were sculpture students at St. Martin’s
School of Art. Bored with the intellectual presumptions of abstraction
and the obscene commercialism of Pop Art, Gilbert & George set
out to redefine the possibilities of art. "What is art?"
asks Gilbert. "Art is having a new vision. It’s all from
the brain; it has nothing to do with materials."
Their new vision required a stripping away of the
artifices to allow for new discovery. They threw away their identities
by shedding surnames, developing similar signatures and sporting
ordinary grey wool suits, the uniform of the middle class man. "You
could have these suits in 1910, 1920, 1970, they don’t belong
to a particular decade," explains George. "Normal, hmmm?"
Except for the enjoyment of each other’s company,
their formal art training left them emotionally and artistically
empty. And, like most art students, financially empty as well. "We
left college and had nothing," George remembers. "We weren’t
goody-goody students who could get a teaching job, not in a million
years. We had no money, no studio."
"We just had ourselves," adds Gilbert, not
missing a beat.
In their impoverished state, necessity spawned invention.
Gilbert & George made themselves the sculpture. Painting
their hands and faces silver, they stood on pedestals as "Living
Sculpture" and "Singing Sculpture" in public spots
around London. From 1968 to 1973, their new concept captivated audiences
in galleries, museums and nightclubs throughout Europe. Their work
evolved from performances to large-scale drawings and photo-collages,
which grew into the colorful photo-silk-screened images on masonite
panels that became their landmark. Speaking of the masonite, George
confesses, "The material is nil, it is a very cheap material.
It’s only the message in the picture that is important. Publicizing
your ideas, that’s where our art is."
The primary idea behind G&G is "to accept
the whole person," says George. "Not to say we have to
be happy, we have to be peaceful, we have to be good…"
"Not that you accept just a certain part of life," continues
Gilbert. "That’s why we always like to go from flowers
to uh…shit." He smiles and adds, "And back again."
Because their work attempts to chronicle the many
faces of contemporary life, Gilbert & George could not ignore
A.I.D.S. They dedicated the entire year of 1988 to constructing
25 works that visually expressed the disease as a part of modern
life. "We wanted to try and make the idea of A.I.D.S. normal,"
says George. "We’re trying to remove the shame of it because
the elements involved in the horror of A.I.D.S. are elements that
exist in any age: death, prejudice, loneliness. It’s nothing
new."
"That’s why people saw [metaphors for] A.I.D.S.
in our former pieces," suggests Gilbert, "but in fact,
they’re all based on life."
Their "For A.I.D.S." exhibit at Anthony
d’Offay Gallery in London drew fierce bidding competition and
by evening’s end, they raised nearly a million dollars. The
entire proceeds — including the usual fifty percent commissions
taken by the gallery — went to CRUSAID, the national British
organization that offers funds, housing and support to a wide social
spectrum of A.I.D.S. sufferers, including pregnant mothers and prisoners.
And while Gilbert & George’s works sometimes
contain nudity and sexual content, they don’t consider any
of them indecent or exploitative. They simply recognize that sex
is a vital force in life. "We believe very much in the sexuality
of all forms," George declares. "I think it’s interesting
that a person who is totally opposed to explicit sexual material…is
quite happy about flowers in the garden and presses that bunch to
[his] face. And that’s all sex, you know. It’s all flowers
fucking."
Surprised, angry, or confused, Gilbert & George
appear in their paintings as people feeling the world around them.
"A lot of artists get complimented in terns of ‘I like
your stuff," relates George. "No one says that to us.
They either related to a particular work or mood."
In a sense, their current photo-based work is just
an extension of those early performances, just adapted to a two-dimensional
form. "Our art doesn’t reflect a stylistic development,"
explains Gilbert. "It reflects how we change, how our views
change, how our insides change…we are trying to show ourselves
truthfully, honestly."
"All together, we see the work as one big, creative life-pulse,"
George says.
"One big miserable shout, that’s it,"
tosses Gilbert, with a nod.
In late April, Gilbert & George will shout it
out in Russia, as invited guests of the Soviet Union of Artists.
They will be the first artists exhibited at the "enormous public
space" of the New Tretyakov Gallery Building of Moscow. "It’s
a fantastic test for our theory that we do non-elitist art,"
says George. "We believe that most people who know nothing
about the thirties, forties and fifties [art] can still be spoken
to by our pictures. They don’t need some sophisticated director
to explain why it’s important."
Summing it up with true British propriety, George
chuckles, "We want to be the artists that Mother won’t
be ashamed of."
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