ART CITIES:Stockholm-Gilbert & George
For nearly five decades the art of Gilbert & George has created a visceral and epic depiction of modern urban existence. At its centre are always the artists themselves, who have dedicated their adult lives to their calling as ‘”Living Sculptures”, witness participants within the moral and vividly atmospheric world of their vision, as it is revealed in their art.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Moderna Museet Archive
Gilbert & George are two men who together are one artist. “The Great Exhibition” comprises works from the period 1971 to 2016, selected by the artists themselves. Gilbert, born in 1943 in the Italian Dolomites, and George, born in 1942 in Dover, UK, have an express purpose with their provocative art: “to reveal the inner-bigotry in the libertarian, and conversely to reveal the inner-libertarianism in the bigot.” Ever since they first met at the Saint Martin’s School of Art and Design, Gilbert & George have been inseparable, both professionally and privately. This was in 1967 and while London was swinging, Gilbert & George were unmoved by current trends. Instead, they donned immaculate attire their “responsibility suits” and embarked on a voyage to challenge the conventions of art and society. 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: “1: 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”. In 1971 Gilbert & George made their first “Photo-pieces”, which remained their dominant form of expression. They gradually shifted the emphasis of their subject-matter away from their own experiences of life. Instead they concentrated on the inner-city reality that confronted them on the street and on the structures and feelings that inform life such as religion, class, royalty, sex, hope, nationality, death, identity, politics and fear. Gilbert & George have lived and worked in the same London neighbourhood for more than five decades, noting how it has changed over time. Dressed in almost matching, immaculate suits, the two are in equal parts subject and object – an indivisible unit, unconditionally devoting themselves and their life together to art. The every day life of Gilbert & George is as creative as it is rigorously ordered. By committing themselves to a discipline as rigorous as it is creative, keeping their life at their home and studio to simple classless routines, they have made room for total creative madness. By 1975, the pair were accomplished enough to purchase their house in Spitalfield, a neighborhood in East London. This run-down area is now gentrified and filled with young hip creative professionals. Gilbert and George restored their 18th century townhouse by themselves, which took them more than three years and they often state that it was the hardest work they have ever done. They still live in the same house together with a huge collection of antiques, children’s books, pottery, and furniture. For the couple, with success came excessive drinking. They admitted, on many occasions, how much they enjoyed the freedom attached to being drunk. In 1980 after a year without working on anything new – they were too busy preparing for their first retrospective – their work was reborn. After expanding their color palette, they started focusing solely on photography and not on their performance-based “live sculptures. In 1986, they won the renowned Turner Prize. Gilbert & George’s work became increasingly scatological in the 1990s. The “NAKED SHIT PICTURES” in the mid 1990s, with their images of turds were confrontational and deliberately set out to offend but as the pair explained, “Fundamentally, there’s something religious about the fact that we’re made of shit. We consist of the stuff. It’s our nourishment, it belongs to us, we’re part of it, and we show this in a positive light”. In its focus on mortality, some critics admired this work for its ability to strip humanity back to its rawest form. With the turn of the millennium, the pair embraced computer technology – all of the work done since then is totally digital. In 2008, they were legally married so their rights and assets would be protected, even though they are against such formalities. The same year, they had a major retrospective at Tate Modern. Gilbert & George purchased an old brewery close to their house to serve as a non-profit to house all their work. The plan, as they revealed in an architectural model, is for a 6,000 square foot building due to open in approximately two years’ time. In the recent years, Gilbert & George have been involved in a number of controversies because of their conservative political views. The couple has said they admire the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher because she believed, as they do, in making money and hard graft. Their latest series mocked beards, yet it was unclear whether this was intended to be an anti-fundamentalist gesture or simply the artists mocking the hipster trend of sporting a beard. On January 2018, their exhibition in Belfast in Northern Ireland was received with protests. Their “SCAPEGOATING PICTURES” contained statements such as “fuck the vicar,” “Rape a Rabbi,” and “Molest a Mullah.” Religious groups requesting the closure of the exhibition called the police several times. There was a similar controversy surrounding their show when it opened in Belfast almost a decade earlier.
Info: Curators: Daniel Birnbaum and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Moderna Museet, Main entrance: Exercisplan 4, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Duration: 9/2-12/5/19, Days & Hours: Tue & Fri 10:00-20:00, Wed-Thu 10:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.modernamuseet.se
