Gilbert & George - Major Exhibition

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Gilbert & George's The Wall

Gilbert & George are having a major retrospective at the Tate Modern. For those of you who don't know them, they are a pair of artists who graduated together from St. Martin's College in the 60s and lived, together, for the past three decades in London's EastEnd. They call themselves "living sculptures". They started off with large hand drawings, like this one, which immediatly garnered them critical success and hefty sales. From there, they decided to move into art works that were less about technique (it bothered them that people were in love with their drawings) and more about ideas and emotion. From young street boys to microscopic images of piss and blood, Gilbert & George travelled the years with massive photographic panels that simulate grandiose types of iconography (e.g. churches' stained glass windows and death memorials). As Kevin said, they are in a quest to become icons themselves.

Because I'm a lucky sonofabitcha, I know someone (Sissy Jen's boyfriend Tim) who works at the Tate, and who managed to get us free tickets and free state-of-the-art digital hearing devices. Zipping on our touch-sensitive screenpad, we entered into the first room and followed the audio tour. Honestly, I can never visit an exhibition again without those listening devices. Sometimes I watched little movies on the tiny screen, or interviews with the artists; I was given plenty of choices and detailed background on selected art works. It was the first time I properly explored an exhibition from beginning to end without giving in to my aching legs.

The South Bank was brimming with queer folk yesterday, thanks to the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival taking place at the BFI South Bank (have you got tickets yet? Hurry up then!). Those queer folk must have wandered South, into the Tate Modern, because there were plenty of them at the exhibition. They provided an interesting context to the show since so much of Gilbert & George's work is about gay men: escorts, youth sexuality, AIDS, pervy old men (them) and so forth. Gilbert & George say that they only depict men because so much of Western Art is about depicting women. I think this is bullshit. They are gay gentlemen who want to photograph young guys and put them on pedestals. The voyeristic aspect is there, including Gilbert & George themselves, in the paintings, lusting after or commanding the young "knights". A pair of gay men walking around the exhibition were carrying a shopping bag from Abercrombie & Fitch, an American store that just opened in Britain, and which requires all its shop attendants to be models. I found it fitting somehow that a shopping bag from Abercrombie & Fitch should be in the same room as Gilbert & George: one wishes to dress them, the other wishes to undress them; both wish to idolize youth (and make a buck out of it.)

Because Gilbert & George work with colour-dyed black & white photographs, I couldn't help being reminded of the iconography used by The Smiths' in the 80s (example) but also Belle & Sebastian's record sleeves (example). Morrissey, of course, goes on to follow Gilbert & George's path of self-icon creation by only using himself in his solo record sleeves. The icon's ubiquity is a cliché, but serves its function of making the artist into something unescapable (and immortal?) Gilbert & George clearly want to stick around forever since many of their slogans are about "eternal life" or "eternal art".

A few of the art works depicted tower blocks in the EastEnd (Flat Man, 1991), which made me wonder if one of them was the tower Kevin and I live in. Kevin says he once saw them in Brick Lane, walking around and posing for photos. Maybe if I ever bump into them, I'll ask if they've ever used the tower blocks that rise beside Victoria Park in their art work.

Germaine Greer: There is only one way Gilbert and George can complete the work - by dying, in unison.