They make straight-in-your-face-art. Volymstark and colourful. Keen on themes such as bodily secretions, jättefula words, anger and provocation. Challenging images from a conflicting Uk.
Art makes Gilbert & George at home in London’s East End. Nowadays, with computers based on inflated images as handkoloreras, printed on plexiskivor and then be joined together in the vastness of the framework. They sold for millions.
” Everything more is definitely. When we were in babystadiet as artists so had people on the streets of London only responded to Leonardo da Vinci if you asked them to mention an artist. They had, however, known to the murderers, politicians and soccer players. Now we all know the names of the different artists, it is something we contributed to, ” says George.
decided early on that the secret is to make art that is not ”manifestly complex, but yet it is”.
– Our art also contains all of the human condition – death, life, sex, money, love, drugs, race, religion, shit, everything. Life’s complexity, such that everyone in the entire world decides to end.
”The dirty words pictures of 1977 (twenty-seven graffitiinspirerade images crowned by the aggressive profanity and mucky the word that they taken from the walls of the hemkvarteren) so thought to and with the fans that they had gone too far. That they were childish.
” But when we showed the photographs twenty-five years later, came the same people and talked about how marvellous they were and how they always loved them. What does it mean? Well, the pictures remain the same but the world is changing and in the end have place for them.
Gilbert on the chair next to the Modern museum visningssal on the fourth plane, and returning to the comprehensibility as an important goal from the beginning.
” We wanted to speak to all as a kind of … mad vicars and had to invent a language of his own. But there were only three art galleries in the whole of London, then, and all refused to show our work, ” he said about the reality that they step out in 1967 after having become a couple at the art school St. Martin’s college of art.
the Duo robotlika performance piece ”the Singing sculpture”, made back in 1969, was a turning point. Galleristerna found it at least interesting in a time when their old classmates, created what George describes as ”deliberately obscure” works.
– The fewer who knew their art, the more sophisticated and successful, they felt. So they created works that ruled out ninety percent of the world’s population, which is really stupid.
such nonsense, have Gilbert & George for over fifty years lived by the motto to maximize the space in the skull for free thoughts by minimizing any external stimuli. Therefore, dressing in the same clothes. They are never on tv or film (the last time they were at the movies was in 1978, ”The deer hunter”) eat every day exactly the same dishes at the same Turkish restaurant and avoid sure popular entertainment.
” We want to liberate ourselves, to not become contaminated, but to keep minds free.
“Well, that is why we always say’ no ‘ to dinners with acquaintances. We do not want to be a part of the ordinary business where you might not be yourself. We want to keep our heads empty of such a thing – and therefore has many acres of surface area for the arts in the skulls.
a price. They still face ”members of the fnysande class, intolerant liberals, disguised hypocrite”. But increasingly, understanding.
– Now-a-days buys both young and old visitors to our utställningsaffischer, more often with text than beautiful press. They simply like the message that frees them from the chains they have hanging on their shoulders, think George.
We grew both up in the country and was a war with a single slogan from home ”everything will be better” – and so it was.
now, five decades after they left St Martin’s, has hung on most of the planet’s prestigegallerier, also the british museum the Tate Modern.
– Everything is different now, everything is changed, and with what a person is and what the class is for something. We grew both up in the country and was a war with a single slogan from home ”everything will be better” – and so it was. Aunt got a tv, uncle got a car and my grandfather got a … vibrator and suddenly we could eat food from all over the world.
– the Awareness that the world is more successful than ever. It is a huge triumph. Western all books, operas, music, evenings of dance and poetry is a success, a culture that provides us with freedom and security. But in other parts of the world is madness, ” stresses George.
of Europe is shaky ground. Mayor Pawel Adamowicz in Gdansk, a friend to them, knivmördades on 13 January this year, after a long time lived under the threat of including their support for the lgbtq activists.
Gilbert would like to ban all religion and decriminalise same-sex sex.
– Such that we can today only be secure in perhaps twenty per cent of the world of sexual reasons. In the rest ongoing, horrific things. We blame religion for this.
” We have already made a banner for it: ”Fuck the planet”, he replies, but smiles a little too wide for his slogan should really convince.
George claims, nevertheless, that the survival is overestimated.
– All of our young friends eating yogurt and hope for eternal life. I usually say to them: “Why not do something important instead?”. It is better than to live a long time, ” he says – though seems to quickly undo his stark message.
He wants to reach other people, not to alienate any one.
” Our definition of art is that it is ”the friendship formed between the viewer and the image”.
” Yes, but just as works of art. We see it is actually from time to time.
