Gilbert & George

“Art for all” is the belief that underpins Gilbert & George’s art. Their trademark format is the large grid, a square or rectangular picture broken into sections that becomes a unified field of signs and images.

Gilbert & George began working together in 1967 when they met at St Martins School of Art, and from the beginning, in their films and ‘living sculpture’ they appeared as figures in their own work. Gilbert & George believe that everything is potential subject matter for their work, and they have always addressed social issues, taboos and artistic conventions. Implicit in their work is the idea that an artist’s sacrifice and personal investment is a necessary condition of art. They have depicted themselves as naked figures in their own work, recasting the male nude as something vulnerable and fragile rather than as a potent figure of strength. Of their most recent show at White Cube, ‘SONOFAGOD PICTURES’ (2006), Michael Bracewell wrote, “lustrous, ornate, pictorially complex, vividly coloured, yet suffused with tenebrous solemnity, they have all of the dramatic visual impact which one might expect to find in neo-Gothic medievalism – in Victorian reclamations of Celtic or Moorish symbolism, for example, regally bejewelled and portentous with romantic mysticism. At the same time, however, the SONOFAGOD PICTURES possess a darkly graven strangeness, at once archaic and ultra-modern, in which their temper no less than their signage appears deeply contemporary, ritualistic and disturbed.”

Gilbert was born in the Dolomites, Italy in 1943; George was born in Devon in 1942 and both live and work in London. Together they have participated in many important group and solo exhibitions including The Venice Biennale (2005), Turner Prize (1984) and Carnegie International (1985). They have had extensive solo exhibitions, including, Whitechapel Art Gallery (1971-1972), National Gallery, Beijing (1993), Shanghai Art Museum (1993), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1995-1996), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1998), Serpentine Gallery, London (2002), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2002) and Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2004-2005).

More on Gilbert & George

Artworks
	I 4 Images
	II 4 Images
	III 3 Images
	IV 4 Images
	V 4 Images
	VI 4 Images
	VII 3 Images
	IX 4 Images

Videos/Audio
	Gilbert and George Video

	Related Texts
CV
Bibliography
SONOFAGOD PICTURES Was Jesus Heterosexual? by Michael Bracewell

	Related Links
http://www.illuminationsmed... Eye Series of films by Illuminations
http://www.tate.org.uk/serv... Tate Online
http://www.tate.org.uk/mode... Tate Modern, London
http://www.guggenheimcollec... Guggenheim Museum, New York

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