Review of Gilbert and George - Tim Marlow with...

Introduction

I once met Gilbert and George. I had gone to a bookstore near St. Martin`s School of Art for a signing and had gone through the doorway as precisely the same moment as these two unassuming artists. I was immediately greeted by the bookstore owner who shook my hand gave me a glass of wine, ushering me into a far corner. It wasn`t until I was half way through the wine that I noticed the two famous individuals to my left. Everyone in the small group had assumed that I was with them, and I guess they assumed that everyone in the group knew me.
Whether they twigged or not, they were delightful company and signed my book `To Stuart, with lots of love from Gilbert and George`. Their `art for all` ethos seems to be a genuinely held one, and despite their considerable fame and notoriety, they were highly approachable .

Despite their gentle, unassuming air (George talks like a member of the Royal family), their art has shocked, amused, entertained and excited since they started producing work together in the late 1960`s. After a period of experimentation, they eventually settled on a distinctive house style that uses brightly coloured photographic montage and lettering to convey their message.
They often place themselves at the centre of their art, seeing their own lives as a kind of living sculpture. As a result, they are perhaps the most easily recognisable artists of their generation, with their impeccable suits and distinctive haircuts, like two robotic showroom dummies.

Their art reflects the world as they see it from their humble home in London`s East End, the same building that they moved into some forty years ago. Curiously, whilst they are so tightly associated with London, they were both originally country boys. George Passmore was born in Devon in 1942 and Gilbert Proesch in Italy in 1943, in a small village in the Dolomites. They met at St Martins School of Art, London, where they began to collaborate.. It was there that they developed the idea of becoming `living sculptures` in their art and in their daily life - all at time long before Covent Garden filled up with this type of `live art`. In 1969 they attracted some considerable attention with their `The Singing Sculpture` where they were painted in gold and they would stand on a table singing along to Flanagan and Allen`s `Underneath the Arches`, in an act not at all typical of the swinging sixties.

To this day the two remain incredibly enigmatic, with their shocking and irreverent works flying in the face of their terribly straight-laced upper-middle-class demeanour. Sex, race, religion, extretia and terrorism are just some of the many themes explored through their work together, so their art is not necessarily to all tastes.

Their recent career spanning Major Exhibition at the Tate (ending May 2007) was the largest retrospective of any artist to be held at the Tate Modern. It took up a whole floor of the building with room after room dedicated to the artists work.

This DVD is an almost perfect souvenir from that event whether you made it to the real thing
or not. It takes a refreshingly straight-forward approach to its subject, using Tim Marlow (curator, broadcaster, writer and art historian and Director of Exhibitions at the White Cube gallery in London) to guide us through the exhibition, room by room with Gilbert and George answering his questions and discussing the art as they go.

Anecdotes are plentiful and for all their peculiarity, their true personlities shine through, leaving the impression that their style is much more than just affectation.

We hear about their methods of working, their daily routines and the whole thing is laced with amusing asides, like their hatred for the country (George recently visited somewhere in Oxfordshire and said `Good Morning` to a young lady who immediately retorted with `F*** off you weird looking c***`. All told with a wonderful deadpan expression).


What`s striking is the frankness and honesty of the duo. Whatever your feelings about their art (which has often upset fine art purists who see it as little more than commercial graphic design), there is no doubt that they are a fascinating and earnest pair who really do take their art seriously, investing an enormous amount of time and effort to try to reflect their message as strongly as they can.

Video

Shot on DV-Cam (16:9), this is a perfectly adequate picture quality for the style of programme.

Audio

Galleries are notoriously difficult to record audio in, particularly those with vast white walls. However, this has been expertly miked to avoid excessive echo and the stereo sound is surprisingly warm.

Features

None

Conclusion

I like Gilbert and George. For me, they`re like the rock stars of the art world, a strangely asexual, Kraftwerk-like duo whose own private lives have become their art. Their meek, almost crushingly polite manners are totally at odds with their outrageous and irreverent art where no subject matter is taboo. And their art itself, with its distinctive, garish posterised photo montages and weird captioning is endlessly entertaining - truly art for all.

This DVD is a brilliant way to either re-visit (or visit) their massive 40 year retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern. What better way to view the works than in the company of the artists themselves?

With a running time of just over an hour, it`s tremendously watchable ( I watched it twice in one week) and in a world where every documentary about art tends to want to become the art itself, the straight-forward and unpretentious approach used here was perfect.