ART CITIES:N.York-Gilbert & George
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore), have long since been acknowledged icons of Contemporary Art. In 1967 they met as students at St Martin’s School of Art in London. By 1969 they were reacting against approaches to sculpture then dominant at St Martin’s, which they regarded as elitist and poor at communicating outside an art context.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lehmann Maupin Gallery Archive
Their strategy was to make themselves into sculpture, so sacrificing their separate identities to art and turning the notion of creativity on its head. Working as a pair and presenting themselves as ‘living sculpture’, incorporating themselves into their art, setting out to provoke their viewers, making them think and question conventions and taboos. Known for their bold statements, as much as their mannequin-like public personas, they formulated their core principals in a 1969 manifesto, The Laws of Sculptors: “I Always be smartly dressed, well groomed relaxed and friendly polite and in complete control. 2 Make the world to 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”. Gilbert and George’s newest body of work “THE BEARD PICTURES”, created over the past two years, the pictures will be unveiled over the next months in a series of exhibitions in New York, Paris, London, Brussels, Naples and Athens. The artists have made a selection of the BEARD PICTURES for Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York, 35 monumental pictures are on view at both of the gallery’s New York locations in Chelsea and downtown Manhattan. In some of the works of the series, the artists stand either in front of a barbed wire or mesh fence, or behind one. Elsewhere, rusted steel rods sprout from collapsing buildings of pre-stressed concrete. In yet other pictures, Gilbert & George are unsmiling comic grotesques, with tiny bodies and huge heads. Behind them a blank silvery void, extravagant ornamental foliage, wire mesh fencing, newspaper advertisements for bouncers, builders and sex workers, the heads in relief of popes, monarchs, worthies and heroes. Aggressively absurd, trashing contemporary artistic niceties but resonant with intense symbolism, “THE BEARD PICTURES” turn history into a mad parade, their mood shape-shifting between that of science fiction, lucid dreaming and Victorian caricature
Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 536 West 22nd Street, New York & 201 Chrystie Street, New York, Duration: 12/10/17-22/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com
