Inside the Art World - Gilbert and George

You can read this article in the December 13 issue of Pi

Gilbert and George are probably two of the most interesting 70 year olds you will probably meet. Seven years ago they held the biggest ever retrospective at the Tate Modern, and they are still creating work even now. Having studied at St Martins university in London many year ago, where they first met, they embarked on one of the most unusual artists careers of the time, claiming themselves to be ‘Living Sculptures’, as, even to his day, they refuse to disassociate themselves from their art.

The White Cube gallery is currently holding talks with significant players in the art world, as a way of opening young people to the different areas of the art world, and I recently got to go to see Tim Marlow in conversation with Gilbert and George. It was eye-opening, interesting and even a little controversial, and I’ve officially decided Gilbert and George are my favourite over 70’s gentlemen.

The most interesting thing about an artist is their quirks, right? Gilbert and George have a lot. They are constantly dressed in matching suits, which they justified by saying “you can always get a table in a restaurant and never get searched at airports”, and they famously don’t have a kitchen, because they don’t want to clutter their minds with unnecessary things. They literally want to focus all their attention onto their art, and for that reason they have dinner at the same restaurant every night. And they have the same thing, because looking at a menu is classed as clutter too.

As the talk initially focused on start ups and beginnings, Gilbert and George explain how mainly their beginnings stemmed from luck and intense advertising of their first show – they used badges, megaphones, sweets, everything they could, to get people to come and visit their first ‘Living Sculptures’ show at the Nigel Greenwood Gallery in 1970, and it worked. From the word go, they decided that they’re motto would be ‘Art for All’, and this becomes exceedingly obvious when we bring their views into consideration.

After letting us know that Darwin was their inspiration due to being so controversial in his time, Marlow wades into the murky area of censorship and wayward themes. “I went to a funeral the other day, and there were 500 people there who were all so happy to have been the ‘elect’ few of God. It’s bad” explained George when talking about religion, “the conceit of religious people is cruel. They believe they are above the law and they only listen to God. I never want to go near a church”. Gilbert and George’s strong views transfer into their work, they believe that having strong subjects like religion, money and sex show that art has meaning behind it, but it is also a sign of the changing times.

“When we were young, money, sex and religion weren’t polite topics. Even in countries like Russia, Chine, Africa, Arab countries, it is still not polite.” Gilbert went on to talk about a pieces of art they recently made called ‘Islam’ and ‘Mosque’, which included slanderous words against Islam, which addressed Arab culture in a western light, and has controversially been on show in Doha recently. These artists problem with art now is that whilst it seems ‘appropriate’ to criticise Christian religion or Judaism or sex, artists steer clear of Islam due to the extreme nature of the religion itself. Understandable, seeing as Gilbert and George are two gay men who live in the East End and have Muslim extremists next door, yet they are brave enough to break through that barrier into the dangerous. “Ban religions”, was their final note on religion.

Other major changes that they have noticed in the art world are both the size and the fame - “In the late 60’s and early 70’s, the art world was the tiniest thing in the world. Paris, New York, London, they barely had any galleries and everyone knew each other. The only artists people knew were long dead. Now everyone knows the name of a living artist.” It is true that the art world has exploded massively in the last 50 years, becoming a big economic player, and it has affected their work too. The advance in technologies used in art, and the increase in gallery spaces has had a massive effect, opening their world up to greater audiences and allowing them to ‘do anything’.

Having lived and worked together for so long, Marlow asks them if they ever argue. “The whole world is a battle – stabbings, murders, wars. It’s a painful screaming world” is their justification for not arguing, and it makes sense. All they do is address these issues in their art which must be quite humbling for them – there are such large issues in the world that their simple lives seem quite trivial.

The part of the talk that sums up Gilbert and George to a tee has to be the end. Marlow asks “did you devise any rules for being an artist?” The answer seemed to be YES when they started reeling off rules such as ‘always be smartly dressed and polite’, ‘make the world believe in you’, ‘never worry or criticise, stay calm’, ‘make use of sex’, ‘reinvent life’, ‘give something back’, and their final piece of art for all aspiring artists? “Fuck the teachers”.