Gilbert & George

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Gilbert & George (2007)

Gilbert & George ( Gilbert Prousch , born September 17, 1943 in St. Martin in Thurn , Italy and George Passmore , born January 8, 1942 in Plymouth , Great Britain) are an artist couple based in the East End of London . Gilbert & George work almost exclusively as a couple. Their work had a significant influence on the Young British Artists .

overview

Gilbert & George stage themselves, their lives, their thoughts and feelings in large-format works. You use many artistic techniques , to a large extent in mixed form. Her concern is a low-threshold, easily understandable "art for everyone".

Gilbert & George became known to a wider audience with large-format photographic works from the late 1970s. Her works preferably revolve around topics such as pietism , religion , sexuality and discrimination in a playful, naive and provocative, kitschy manner . For example, the Black Church Face tableau from 1980 shows the motionless but reproachful face of a black boy in front of the altar of an English neo-Gothic church.

In their sometimes garish, poppy-sacred imagery, the imposing photographic works by the two are often reminiscent of Victorian stained glass and impress with their size, such as Death after Life from 1984 with a width of 13.7 meters.

Frequently media attention has been drawn to the portrayal of reproductive organs and feces in her works. In their last exhibitions in 2007, Gilbert & George turned against Catholicism in particular .

Life

Gilbert was born in St. Martin in Thurn , Italy, and studied art in Wolkenstein and at the Hallein School of Sculpture and the Art Academy in Munich before moving to England. George was born in Plymouth, UK and studied at the Dartington Adult Education Center, Dartington College of Arts and the Oxford School of Art, now Oxford Brookes University .

The two first met on September 25, 1967, when they took Anthony Caro's sculpture class at St. Martins School of Art, now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design . They both say they came together because George was the only person who understood Gilbert's poor English. In a 2002 interview with the Daily Telegraph , they said of their meeting: "It was love at first sight." Gilbert & George have been married since 2008.

Performance artist

Gilbert & George became internationally known as performance artists . As a student they formed "The Singing Sculpture" in 1969. They stood, painted with bright metallic colors, mostly on a table, posed in mechanical movements and sang to a recording of "Underneath the Arches" (1932), a song by the British singing and comedy couple Flanagan and Allen , which was played during the Second World War was popular. During the performance, they alternately exchanged a glove and a walking stick, with the artist using the glove to rewind the cassette with the title. This is how they presented themselves to museum visitors for hours. With this self-designation as a work of art, they redefined the concept of sculpture .

The self-portrayal was reproduced in numerous videos by the artists. For example in the work “Gordon's makes us drunk” (1972). In this twelve-minute art video, Gilbert and George celebrate the enjoyment of Gintonic to classical music. They refuse to separate their action art from their everyday life and therefore refer to themselves as "Living Sculptures". They see in their behavior, their clothing, movement and language the presented union of their art and themselves as artists.

Photomontages

Gilbert & George is best known for their large-format photomontages , such as Cosmological Pictures (1993), which are created in extremely bright colors, are backlit and covered with black grid fields to give the impression of stained glass .

Gilbert & George themselves are often depicted in the works together with flowers, their friends, allusions to Christian symbolism and youth. The early works were in black and white, then red and yellow notes were added. Later the simple ones gave way to a wider range of more saturated colors. Sonofagod (2005) reverted to a darker, somber palette.

Some series of her pictures have attracted media attention because they used socially taboo depictions, such as nudity, sexual intercourse and body fluids such as feces, urine and semen. The title of the series Naked Shit Pictures (1995) (dt. Naked shit pictures) was widely received. In 1986, Gilbert & George were criticized by left-wing commentators for a series of works such as the glorification of 'rough guys', such as skinheads , while the image of an Asian had the disrespectful title Paki , which is commonly used to revile Pakistani migrants.

In May 2007 Gilbert and George were the subject of the BBC documentary 'Imagine'. At the end of the broadcast, a work called Planed was announced for 48 hours on the BBC and Guardian websites for free download . People who downloaded the work, printed it out, and put the pieces together now have an original 'Gilbert & George'.

For many years they were based on Fournier Street, Spitalfields , East London. Since 2000 her works have been exhibited in the contemporary gallery White Cube , Hoxton Square and since 2009 at ARNDT Berlin.

Public collections (selection)

Exhibitions (selection)

Awards

Bibliography (selection)

  • Gilbert & George - The Great Exhibition , Ostfildern 2007, ISBN 3-7757-1971-7 .
  • The Complete Pictures , London 2007, ISBN 1-85437-681-0 .
  • Hans-Ulrich Obrist: Gilbert & George , Cologne 2007, ISBN 3-865-60217-7 .
  • François Jonquet: Gilbert & George - intimate conversations with François Jonquet , New York 2005, ISBN 0-7148-4435-7 .
  • Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Robert Violette (Eds.): The Words of Gilbert and George , London 1997, ISBN 0-500-28015-0 .
  • Carter Ratcliff and Robert Rosenblum: Gilbert & George - The singing Sculpture , London 1993, ISBN 0-500-23655-0
  • Wolf Jahn: "The art of Gilbert and George or an aesthetic of existence", Munich 1989, ISBN 3-88814-314-4

Web links

Commons : Gilbert & George  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich Blanché: Consumer Art. Culture and Commerce at Banksy and Damien Hirst. Bielefeld 2012, p. 66.
  2. ↑ a b NZZ : Exkrement, Sperma ... und Gott , March 31, 2007
  3. ↑ NZZ : NZZ: A Life as Sculpture , March 25, 2007
  4. ↑ Telegraph , 05.28.02
  5. ↑ [1]