ART CITIES:Frankfurt-Gilbert & George

Gilbert & George have been living and creating art together now for over half a century. Their body of work is still as explosive as it is significant. The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is dedicating an extensive retrospective entitled “The Great Exhibition” to the visually powerful and sometimes provocative universe of this eccentric, London-based artist duo, showing works from 1971 until 2019.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt Archive

 As both subject and object of their own work, Gilbert & George form a complete artistic unity that draws no distinction between art and life. As “living sculptures,” they embody their art and are both topic and focal point of their large-format collages and screened pictorial worlds. Their work revolves around death, hope, life, fear, sex, money, and religion. These are also societal issues, which they depict in all  their contradictions: at once joyful and tragic, grotesque and serious, surreal and symbolic. The duo deal with everything that makes us uneasy. Their goal, however, is not to shock, but rather to make visible what is happening in the world, according to their motto “Art for All.” From punks to hipsters, from authorities to outsiders, and from headlines to advertising—Gilbert & George have something to say about it all. By challenging our picture of the world, their works demonstrate,  time and again, how forward-thinking they are.  Ever since they first met at the  Saint Martin’s School of Art,  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 with a blatant disregard for any notions of “good taste”. Fearless and straight to the point, their art has the power to unsettle the viewer.  The exhibition is packed from floor to ceiling with pictures that are grotesque and terse, surrealistic and symbolic, but consistently within the strict grid that is emblematic of the duo. Sex, money, race, and religion are among the subjects of their art, which succeeds in combining happiness and sadness, beauty and meaning. Gilbert, born in 1943 in the Italian Dolomites, and George, born in 1942 in Plymouth, 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”. 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.  Punk rockers and nationalists, folk dance and bombs, autumn leaves and personal ads – with their fearless and singular common gaze, the most iconic duo of the art world probes the world that surrounds us all.

Photo: Gilbert & George, BLOOD CITY, 1998, 151 x 127 cm, Courtesy of Gilbert & George

Info: Curator: Hans Ulrich Obrist and Daniel Birnbaum, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Römerberg, Frankfurt, Duration: 12/2-16/5/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-19:00, www.schirn.de