GILBERT AND GEORGE, 1943 and 1942

Gilbert and George are two men who together are one artist: Gilbert & George.

 

The vision of Gilbert & George is their art, of which they are the embodiment. Therefore Gilbert & George are the art of Gilbert & George. The art of Gilbert & George is based upon feelings, thoughts, and intellect.

 

Gilbert & George are a total modern independent visionary artist, alone.

 

The vision of Gilbert & George is firstly their singular and particular way of seeing, experiencing and celebrating life. The vision of Gilbert & George is also and simultaneously their way of seeing and creating art.

 

The inspiration and subject of the art of Gilbert & George is modern life. The life of Gilbert & George is art.

 

Gilbert & George, with the viewer, explore and test their feelings in their art.

 

Gilbert & George see the modern human condition. Acceleration, religion, politics, business, dullness, leisure, celebration, violence, money, history, poverty, age, sex, work, hope, newness, sickness, desire, intoxication, beauty, dereliction, love, despair; the radicalized world; the virtual world. They see the daily routines and feelings of their fellow citizens, from all backgrounds: the fast modern multi-cultural and multi- technological world. Office workers and junkies. They see the spectrum of human behaviour.

 

Gilbert & George observe the constantly changing life of our world the way one might observe the weather, or study the ceaseless current of a vast river.

 

The vision of Gilbert & George is committed to raw realism, but is also deeply romantic: finding heightened or disturbed emotion in ordinary things, in a way that renders the subjects of their art extraordinary and richly atmospheric; individual, yet connected by common feelings. The vision of Gilbert & George derives from the union of lucidity and heightened feeling; their art from the balance of control and loss of control.

 

[…]

 

For Gilbert & George, the modern world is always in broiling volatile restlessness. Their art depicts the modern world as brooding, lonely, disrupted, portentous, mad, cosmic, melancholy, monumental, chaotic, ordinary, desolate, dream-like, dull, monstrous, violent, blasphemous, infinite.

 

[…]

 

(exceprts from Michael Bracewell, An introduction to the art of Gilbert & George, more informations on The Gilbert & George Centre)