History of Art: Gilbert and George



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	Gilbert & George



Gilbert and George From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Gilbert Prousch (or Proesch) (born in San Martin (San Martino), Italy, September 11, 1943) and George Passmore (born in Devon, England January 8, 1942), better known as Gilbert & George, are artists. They have worked almost exclusively as a pair. Gilbert was born in San Martin de Tor in Italy, and studied art at the Wolkenstein School of Art and Hallein School of Art in Austria and the Akademie der Kunst, Munich, before moving to England. George was born in Plymouth in the United Kingdom, and first studied art at the Dartington Hall College of Art and the Oxford School of Art, then part of the Oxford College of Technology, which eventually became Oxford Brookes University. The two first met on 25 September 1967 while studying sculpture at St Martins School of Art, now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, one of six colleges in the University of the Arts, London. The two claim they came together because George was the only person who could understand Gilbert's rather poorly spoken English. In a 2002 interview with The Daily Telegraph they said of their meeting: "it was love at first sight." (Telegraph, 05.28.02). It is widely assumed that Gilbert & George are lovers, and although they dismiss questions about their sex lives, George, in the documentary 'Imagine', aired on 08.05.07 in the UK, referred to Gilbert and himself as "two poofs". Performance artists They were initially known as performance artists. While still students they made The Singing Sculpture (1970), for which they covered themselves in gold metallic paint, stood on a table, and mimed to a recording of Flanagan and Allen's song "Underneath the Arches", sometimes for hours at a time. A number of works from the early 1970s consisted of the two of them getting drunk, usually on gin. Smashed (1973) was a set of photographs documenting a drunken evening, while Gordon's Makes Us Drunk is a film of the pair drinking Gordon's gin and listening to Elgar and Grieg, occasionally saying "Gordon's makes us very drunk" or a slight variant thereof. This work, in common with many others by Gilbert and George, is executed in a completely deadpan way. The matching business suits which they wore for these performances became a sort of uniform for them, and they rarely appear in public unless wearing them. It is also virtually unheard of for one of the pair to be seen without the other. They refuse to disassociate their performances from their everyday lives, insisting that everything they do is art. The pair regard themselves as "living sculptures". In a 2001 interview with Tom O'Toole on Mid-West Radio, a local radio station in the west of Ireland, the pair stated that the living sculptures idea came to them from a visit to Knock Shrine, Co. Mayo Ireland where it is believed that an apparition of the Blessed Virgin, saints and angels occurred in 1879. It was reported on the "Weekly Arts" programme on Mid-West Radio on 14 February 2007 that Gilbert and George have recently accepted a commission for a piece of installation art which is to be located at the apparition site. Photo-montages The pair are perhaps best known for their large scale photo-montages, such as Cosmological Pictures (1993), frequently tinted in extremely bright colours, backlit, and overlaid with black grids so as to resemble stained glass windows. Gilbert & George themselves often feature in these works, along with flowers and youths, their friends, and echoes of Christian symbolism. The early works in this style were in black and white, with red and yellow touches in later series. Later these works moved to use a range of bold colours. Their 2005 work, Sonofagod, has returned to a more sombre and darker palette. Some series of their pictures have attracted media attention through including potentially shocking imagery, including nudity, depictions of sexual acts, and bodily fluids, such as faeces, urine and semen. The titling of their series, such as "Naked Shit Pictures" (1995), has also contributed to media attention. In 1986 Gilbert and George attracted criticism for a series of works seemingly glamorizing 'rough types' of London's East End such as skinheads, while a picture of an Asian man bore the derogatory title "Paki". For many years they have been residents of Fournier Street, Spitalfields, East London. In 2000 they moved galleries to be represented by White Cube. In May 2007, Gilbert and George were the subject of a BBC 'Imagine' documentary presented by Alan Yentob. At the end of the programme a work entitled 'Planed' was made available as a free file download from the BBC and Guardian websites for 48 hours. People who downloaded the files could then print off and assemble the piece, and own an original Gilbert and George work for free. A book of their work, Complete Pictures, 1971–2005, published in early 2007, includes over a thousand of their works. Each work is large in scale and is comprised of symmetrical arrangements of equal-sized square panels. The works average out to one work every 12 days for nearly 35 years.

England

The Wall

Death

Fates

Rain on Us 1998 Spunk Money 1997 Rack 2005 BLOOD ON SHIT 1996 PISSED 1996 SHIT AND PISS 1996 FRONT AND BACK AND PISS 1996 Fruiters 2006 Stink 1988 The Singing Sculpture Spit on piss 1996 Piss Mooning 1996 Gothic London

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