Clarity Of Vision - Isabel Quintanilla

An appreciation of the importance of the ordinary, the everyday in our lives has a long history in art.  It dates back at least as far as the early 18th Century in France with artist Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin and his painting “A Lady Taking Tea” from 1735.  The setting is unpretentious, modest even and there is an air of calm self-absorption in the scene.  The skill of the artist is in transforming an ordinary occasion with simple furnishings into something almost seductive.

Chardin, A Lady Taking Tea, 1735, oil on canvas, 81 x 99 cm

Author Alain De Botton argues that given the way the world is going, we need all the reliable, unassuming and inexpensive satisfactions we can get.  He believes that it lies in the power of art to honour the elusive but real value of ordinary life.

This may have been the motivation behind the art of Isabel Quintanilla (1938 – 2017).  In Spain, the practice of granting a special reverence to ordinary everyday objects dates back even further to the Baroque masters such as Velazquez and his ‘bodegones’; that is, art depicting pantry items, game, food and drink.  Quintanilla was a member of the Madrid School of realists who graduated from the Academia de San Fernando, where rigorous training in the traditional academic manner had been upheld since the 18th Century.

Quintanilla, Cabracho (Scorpionfish), 1992, oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm

Like other pupils of the time, including Antonio Lopez Garcia who is arguably the most famous of the Madrid realists, she had to develop her skills against the backdrop of the intellectual and artistic repression of the middle years of Franco’s dictatorship.

While some may regard the art of the Madrid realists as minimalism, what makes them unique is their ability to “de-nude, de-code and explicate the essence of our collective consciousness”.   What we are viewing is the object itself, free of any socio/political contexts.  The subject matter of Quintanilla’s work ranges from simple still life to panoramic landscapes.

Quintanilla, Glass On Top Of A Fridge, 1972, pencil on paper,  48 x 36 cm

Viewing work like this is very instructive to me.  Occasionally I get sucked into producing grandiose scenes forgetting that some of the simplest compositions can make the best paintings - if the artist has the skill.   Perhaps it’s a matter of being in the moment, focusing on the object itself free of any distractions.

In his review of a 1996 exhibition of Spanish Contemporary Realists held in London, Edward J Sullivan writes of the absolute immediacy and intensity of their vision.  But he also argues that it’s important not to draw to close a link between their work and that of the Baroque masters of the past.  Artists such as Velazquez were operating largely under the strict guidelines laid down by the Catholic Church and the counter reformation.

Quintanilla, El Telefono, 1996, oil on board, 110 x 100 cm

Unfortunately, whether I scanned this image from a catalogue, or downloaded it off the net, I am unable to convey the absolute clarity of the vision in this work.  This is beyond photorealism and I think it’s because of the use of light.  There is an intimacy in this scene that would seem to run contrary to the cold, clinical hard-edged nature of much photo-realist art.  You get the sense that you are entering someone’s private world.

Quintanilla, Vendana (Window), 1970, oil on board, 131 x 100 cm

Views through windows have been a popular topic for artists for centuries.  What fascinates me is the suggestion of furniture in the bottom left of the composition.  There is also the cool, clear light and a sense of imprisonment in the scene.  

Quintanilla had exhibited either individually or in group shows at the Prado in Madrid, the Marlborough Gallery in London and at many other venues.  Her work forms part of the collections at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC and in various galleries throughout Europe.

References;

Books;

“Contemporary Spanish Realists”, 1996, Marlborough Fine Art, London

“Art As Therapy”, 2014, Alain De Botton & John Armstrong

The Net;

Leandro Navarro Gallery

The Sculpture of Jane Cavanough

In an interview she gave with Arts Health Network New South Wales, sculptor Jane Cavanough was asked “As an artist, how do you use art for your personal health and well-being?”  She gave a very telling response,  “Art is very low on the spectrum of cultural appreciation in Australia – very different for instance in Europe.  It is difficult to make your living being an artist and I sometimes think I should describe myself as a gambler rather than an artist, because now, with every project I apply for, the client mostly asks for a concept, which not only takes ages to think about, but also requires 3d illustration, for which I pay someone….and this is expensive – I’m not sure how many professions require the answer to the question before contracting them – and this really gets me down.

I knew that if I stayed being a landscape architect I would end up depressed and unsatisfied. The fact remains, I love what I do, and it never feels like work.”

Like many people, I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with public sculpture and I’m not sure if the blame should be leveled at the artists or those who commissioned these works, or both.  The “cheese stick” looming menacingly over Melbourne’s City Link comes to mind.  Many sculptors seem to be motivated by a desire to confront or challenge the public and they forget that many of us are confronted EVERY DAY with their creations.  But at its best, public sculpture can be memorable because it engages with the public.

Touchstones, Bankstown Arts Centre, Sydney, 2011.  These copper and glass pebbles refer to the lapidary workshops located in the arts complex.

This brings me to Jane Cavanough who is based in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.  Her interest in sculpture dates back to the early 1990’s when she was working as a landscape architect in Sydney.  After studying at the Sydney College of the Arts, she instigated a couple of environmentally based sculpture events in Centennial Park and has continued to make site specific landscape based sculpture.

Endemic, Bungarribee NSW, Designed by Jane Cavanough and indigenous artist Enda Watson, a family group of corten steel kangaroos gather on the common at Bungarribee, developed by Urban Growth NSW.  Apparently, the locals dress up these sculptures every Christmas which gives Cavanough “a real buzz.”

Through her business Artlandish Art and Design, Cavanough works either solely or in collaboration with design teams for local and state governments, developers, statutory bodies and architecture firms to develop projects from concept through to completion.  The works are fabricated by artisans adept at working with glass, LED lighting, forged, stainless and mild steel, copper, bronze, brass, cast concrete, stone, timber, mist and water.

Boer War Memorial, Anzac Parade Canberra designed by Jane Cavanough and Group GSA, winner of a national design competition in 2012.

The aim is to create artworks that have a strong relationship to the site in urban, architectural and landscape settings. The relationship between people, sculpture and landscape lies at the heart of  Cavanough’s artwork. Rather than producing art that is willfully alienating or inaccessible to the public, she seeks to engage the environmental and cultural aspects of each site in her work.  She has won a number of scholarships and awards throughout her career.

You can read more of my blogs or check out my own art on www.geoffharrisonarts.com.

References;

Arts Health Network NSW

www.janecavanough.com.au

Toilet Humour Or Art?

We could have just ignored it, or laughed it off. But no, the contemporary art world had to tie itself in knots over Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”, which was submitted to the Society of Independent Artists first exhibition in New York in 1917. Fountain is one of a series of “readymades” produced by Duchamp at the time.  

Duchamp later recalled that the idea for Fountain arose from a discussion with the collector Walter Arensberg and the artist Joseph Stella. He purchased a urinal from a sanitary ware supplier and submitted it – or arranged for it to be submitted to the exhibition. The Society was bound by its constitution to accept all submissions, but it made an exception to Fountain. It was excluded from the exhibition and Arensberg and Duchamp resigned from the Society in protest.

‘Fountain’, 1917

The decision of the Society seemed to run contrary to its advertised ethos of “no jury – no prizes”. Duchamp had moved from Paris to New York in 1915, and with his friends Henri-Pierre Roche and Beatrice Wood wanted to assert the independence of art in America.  

In its article, The Tate makes reference to Duchamp’s painting “Nude Descending A Staircase No.2” being withdrawn from the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1912. Duchamp apparently saw this as an extraordinary betrayal and described it as a turning point in his life. Thus, the submission of Fountain could be seen as an experiment by Duchamp in testing the commitment of the new American Society to the principals of freedom of expression and its tolerance of new conceptions of art.

‘Nude Descending A Staircase No.2’, 1912

So, what are we to make of Fountain? Was it part of Duchamp’s stated objective that anything can be a work of art if the artist says so? According to the Tate, the original is lost which begs the question why bother producing replicas of it and why is it considered one of the icons of twentieth century art? Artist Matthew Collings ask the question is Duchamp’s readymades all part of a ‘no skill is needed joke’? 

“It was really trying to kill the artist as a God by himself” - Duchamp, commenting on Fountain. He was keen to remove the artist from the pedestal that he created for himself. Collings describes Fountain as the measure of all irony, now preserved at the Pompidou Centre in Paris – although copies can be found everywhere including any hardware store, come to think if it. Yet when I visit the sanitary section, I never think of Duchamp. Why? 

“My idea was to choose an object that wouldn’t attract me either by its beauty or its ugliness, to find a point of indifference in my looking at it” - Duchamp commenting on his readymades. Collings sees Duchamp’s art as the first stirrings of avant-gardism in the 20th century, an avant-gardism that was not concerned with pursuing quality in art, but instead of quality. Collings believes Duchamp is responsible for the fact that no one really knows what quality is in modern art.

‘Bicycle Wheel’ - one of Duchamp’s Readymades

Duchamp’s first criteria for the art he produced was that it should amuse him, but then he thought it shouldn’t be what everyone else thinks art should be about – that is; the skill of the artist’s hand. He thought there should be something more – the artist’s mind was just as important as the artist’s hand. 

In the 1960’s, just before he died, he was asked why when he wanted to destroy art, his readymades now seem so aesthetic and so part of art, he replied “well no one is perfect”. It’s argued that Duchamp opened the door to freedom in modern art, to feel free to do your own thing. Yet, Collings argues that Duchamp’s readymades are a devastating one-liner that has us questioning if we’ve reached the end of art. “Where can you go after that?” he asks. Duchamp’s answer was to play chess for many years. 

Collings asks if Duchamp’s readymades are the sickly green light of cultures’ last meltdown. I like Collings’ description of Fountain being the asteroid of irony hurtling through artspace, a symbol of culture nowadays being empty and frivolous in the eyes of many. But he acknowledges the seriousness in Duchamp’s art too. 

But Duchamp never gave up entirely on art, he just produced it secretively. An earlier blog of mine “The Woman Who Conquered Marcel Duchamp” discusses this.  

References; 

Tate.org.au 

‘This is Modern Art’, BBC Channel 4, 1999 presented by Matthew Collings 

The Photography of Andreas Gursky

Hyper reality is the thought that comes to mind when viewing the photography of Andreas Gursky.  I became aware of his large scale somewhat documentary work in the powerful exhibition “Civilization: The Way We Live Now” at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2019.  Sadly, I missed a major survey of his work at the same venue 10 years earlier. 

Born in Leipzig in 1955, Gursky was a student of the famous German conceptual photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher.  He is considered one of the finest photographers at work today and presents an almost overwhelming vision of contemporary life in images crammed with information, the individual reduced to an atom in a vast universe of order, or in some cases, chaos.     

He began to digitally alter his images as soon as the technology became available.  A prime example is 99 Cent, one of his most iconic works.  He altered the position of some of the store’s aisles and created a mirror image in the ceiling to flatten the image.  There is a formalist structure in his work but at the same time there is a sense of reality playing with unreality.  He pioneered the practice of face mounting photographs onto Plexiglas.

99 Cent (1999) 207 x 325 cm

Gursky also presents images of excess and waste, of consumerism having lost its bearings. There is a questioning of one’s place in this world, of man being overwhelmed by a capitalist system that has become a Frankenstein monster. In “Amazon” from 2016, he presents an image of the Amazon warehouse in Pheonix Arizona. This is a composite image designed to present each object in correct size relative to the others. Thus he achieves what has been described as a supernatural clarity to the image.

Amazon (2016) 207 x 407 cm

In Gursky’s imagery the individual becomes a cog in a vast capitalist machine where all semblance of a unique identity is lost in a sterile, regimentally ordered environment. Rather than focus on the individual as such, Gursky is more concerned with the human species and the environments that it has created.

Hong Kong Stock Exchange II (2001) 207 x 323 cm

His images are beautiful and yet in some ways disturbing. There is a political angle to his presentation of reality, to the key issues of our time, but he leaves it to the viewer to decide how to think. His method of using composite imagery dates back to at least 1993 with his image of a huge block of flats in Paris. He positioned his camera at two locations some distance apart so that each window would appear the correct size, free from the distortion of optics in an image over 4 metres wide.

Paris – Montparnasse (1993)

There has always been an element of abstraction in Gursky’s work. In his image “Rhine II” from 1999, he digitally removed the buildings on the far side of the river to present an abstract image of the Rhine near Dusseldorf. It could be considered an image of man’s manipulation of the natural world to create order. Yet there is an emphasis on textures, the contrast between the shimmering light from the river, the softness of the clouds, the lush carpet of the grass and the hardness of the pavement.

Rhine II (1999) 156 x 308 cm

Like other photographs he has produced, there is a detached yet enticing quality to his image making.  He encourages the viewer to enter these scenes yet provides no guidance as to how one should feel. 

Hello, my name is Geoff. You may be interested to know that I am a fulltime artist these days and I regularly exhibit in galleries in Victoria, but particularly in Melbourne. You may wish to check out my work using the following link; https://geoffharrisonarts.com

References; 

Tate.org.au 

Davidcharlesfox.com 

thebroad.org

To Hell And Back With Tracey Emin

The bad girl of British art Tracey Emin was in the final stages of preparing her exhibition for the Royal Academy in 2020 alongside work of her hero Edvard Munch.  Then she was struck down with an aggressive form of cancer and had several organs removed.  She wasn’t expected to survive and just nine days after the opening, the exhibition was closed for six months due to Covid, an experience she found heartbreaking because it had meant so much to her.  The RA describes the exhibition as an exploration of grief, loss and longing. 

In laying down its policy on Covid restrictions, the British Government ranked galleries and museums alongside nightclubs – a strategy Emin found extraordinary and which she attributes to most politicians having never visited a gallery or museum.

A painter, drawer, sculptor, photographer who works in a variety of media, Tracey Emin became the best known and most controversial of the young British artists who emerged in the late 1990’s.  Her work is largely autobiographical and speaks broadly of the female experience.

Emin once claimed that she had been in love with Munch since she was 18.  Munch died in 1944.  His work which she chose for the exhibition is, she argues, more soulful and mournful than his better known work (such as The Scream) and about women and the emotions they go through, which made him a very unique artist in his time. 

In an interview to accompany the exhibition The Loneliness Of The Soul, it was suggested to her that Munch’s work portrays the tragedy of women whereas Emin’s work speaks of their resilience.  She responded by saying that she has experienced tragedy in her life which has featured in her work. One only has to think of works such as “My Bed” which she entered in the 1998 Turner Prize.  The bed is littered with condoms, cigarette butts, empty vodka bottles etc. and references disastrous sexual experiences and the aftermath.  She refers to the hostility and derision that her work received – one irate critic complained that anyone can submit a bed to an exhibition.  Emin’s response is a classic “well they didn’t, did they”.

My Bed, 1998

She believes that 30 years ago, Munch’s paintings weren’t taken seriously and that The Scream was regarded as a cartoon joke.  But now that there is a greater awareness of the issues many women have to face, there is a greater respect for his work.

Emin explained that what she went through with her cancer treatment was like surviving a plane crash, and she is so grateful to have survived and for every single moment. She now seems a happier and content person.

When I slept I longed ForYou

The issue of rape and sexual violence that appears so often in Emin’s work was raised during the interview.  She came up with an interesting expression.  When she was at school in the 1970’s  school girls would speak of being broken into last night, and they weren’t referring to burglary.  They were referring to their first (most likely unwanted) sexual encounter and this was taken for granted.  Emin claims to have been raped more than once back then and the real issue for her was the aftermath, which included wanting to sleep with just about every guy in her home town of Margate as a revenge and to empower herself sexually.  But she realised that this was diabolical for her self-esteem.

Tracey Emin at White Cube Gallery

After viewing her work, many girls and young women have written to Emin discussing their own disastrous sexual experiences which often resulted in abortions.  Now with the Me Too movement and with women being more open about discussing these issues, she believes that people are starting to pay attention.  But with her confronting work dating back decades Emin was, arguably, well ahead of the whole movement.

Now that she has recovered from her cancer, which included being bed ridden for 3 months, she is planning to open her own art school and residency in Margate where smoking and excessive noise will not be tolerated.  The new Tracey. 

References;

BBC Newsnight

The Royal Academy

ZCZ Films

Bill Henson - Art & Politics

“Meaning comes from feeling”, is a favourite quote from Bill Henson. To describe Henson as a photographer seems to understate the significance of his work and the motivations behind it.  He lives in a world within a world, “a retreat of quiet contemplation and dark imaginings”. Although there are classical overtones in his work, his imagery is often dark, mildly disturbing and gritty.  Henson believes the best art can be life-affirming but perhaps also disconcerting and confronting and it’s this paradox that brings an edginess to his art.  He claims that the images that have had the most profound impact on him artistically are paintings, not photographs.

Henson’s photograph of conductor Simone Young from 2002

The portrayal of children at around the age of puberty in much of Henson’s work requires explanation.  It’s an age of transition where the person is neither child nor adult.  It’s a time, says Henson, for experimentation, for self-examination when things can go very well or very badly.  The late Edmund Capon thought that Henson’s portrayal of adolescents was about vulnerability, about being on the cusp of knowledge where one is aware of things but doesn’t know how to deal with them.

Untitled 2001, 127cm x 180cm

His career dates back to the 1970’s and has courted controversy within the art world from time to time.  That controversy spilled over into the broader community as a result of an exhibition Henson held at Sydney’s Roslyn Oxley Gallery in 2008 – an exhibition that attracted the ire of then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The exhibition featured images of naked adolescents (some aged only 13) that were seized by police and an argument raged over whether the exhibition was art or child pornography.  Kevin Rudd described the exhibition as revolting and stressed his belief that children need to have their innocence protected. 

Interestingly, then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, who owned a Henson work, called for level heads to prevail.  He was concerned about police “tramping through art galleries and libraries” being an attack on freedom. But reports that Henson had been allowed to scout for models at a local school complicated the debate.  Two things need to be emphasized here; firstly he was ALLOWED to scout for models. Secondly, where else was he meant to find them?  Go doorknocking?  Roam around sports grounds?

Untitled 1994, 250cm x 244cm

I have no recollection of any journalist having the courage to ask Rudd if he actually saw the exhibition, nor did any of them remind Rudd that Henson had been Australia’s representative at the Venice Biennale with similar work.

A few years after the Sydney show, I attended a talk at the Gippsland Art Gallery given by Henson during an exhibition of his work there.  Someone asked him to comment on the controversy and his response was quite enlightening.  As he was flying off to Sydney for the opening, a New South Wales state Labor politician was jailed on child sex charges.  Henson believes that Rudd was looking for a distraction and someone got into Rudd’s ear about the exhibition, which was just what the Prime Minister was looking for.

Untitled 2017

The police carried out interviews with the parents of the children depicted in Henson’s work and no one was prepared to lay charges.  So the story promptly died – at least as far as the 24 hour news cycle is concerned. 

Sensibly, Henson remained silent at the time whilst many in the art community passionately came to his defence.  The issue of freedom of artistic expression became central in the debate.

At the opening of the Melbourne Art Fair in 2010, Henson broke his silence over the controversy.He called for politicians to make art available for everyone in the community, not to stop people from seeing it.“We need a politics that makes the world safe for art.Art itself can never be entirely safe as it is a form of truth and truth is a wild thing for us to tame.”

Untitled 2008, 127 x 180 cm

“We see a new growth in censoriousness and an impulse to restrict the conditions under which art is produced - an absurd attempt to conflate artistic freedom and child welfare as an issue.  The idea that the two can be mutually exclusive is absurd.  Everything we know about the world comes to us through our bodies, the idea of banning the human body at whatever age as a subject for art is ridiculous when you look at it in a historical context.”  One only has to think of the paintings of Balthus decades earlier.

Balthus, Therese Dreaming, 1938

Henson has remained in contact with many of the children (now adults) depicted in his work and their parents, and they have expressed pride in their involvement.

Henson wants politicians to be more statesmanlike and lead, rather than pander to fear (real or imagined) about the portrayal of the human body in art.  Well, given the current crop of political “leaders” in this country, I would suggest that Henson shouldn’t hold his breath.

References;

ABC TV – 7:30

ABC TV - Lateline

The Art of Bill Henson, Obsessions documentary

Glimpses Of Another World

With my upcoming exhibition at Tacit Galleries in Collingwood, I am returning to an earlier theme in my art practice, that of institutional environments.  The contrast between internal and external light is crucial in this work.  But also, there is the theme of mental incarceration.  The mind can play cruel games with us, imprisoning us with our own thoughts and inner turmoil.  Locked away in our preoccupations, our loneliness, there is a world out there that we sometimes feel unable to engage with.

View From The Attic, oil on canvas, 77 x 71 cm

The windows in these scenes could be computer screens in our so-called “connected” age.  Or they could be transparencies through which we view the world, made semi opaque by our preoccupations and inner turmoil.  But, as Olivia Laing discusses in her book “The Lonely City”, windows can be analogous to eyes.  Thus a sense of being walled off from the world is combined, even exacerbated by a sense of almost unbearable exposure.

Inside The Tower, Willsmere, oil on canvas, 76 x 61 cm

The theme of institutional environments in my art practice dates back to the 1990’s when I was studying art at RMIT University.  Contributing factors to this theme include;

• A history of depression in my family

• Having a half-brother who worked as a publications officer with the Mental Health Authority in the 1970’s & 80’s. He once drove me around the grounds of Willsmere Psychiatric Hospital in Kew. I can recall thinking to myself that if I was mad, I wouldn’t mind spending some time in this place – but of course, I never went inside. Not until the facility was closed which brings me to…

• Attending an open day at Willsmere in the early 1990’s, just after the facility had closed. I can remember it being an overcast drizzly day which set the scene perfectly

• The series “Jonathan Miller’s Madness” which was screened on ABC TV whilst I was studying at RMIT, which discussed the history and treatment of mental illness

• Witnessing the performance piece “Going Bye Byes” where British artist Stephen Taylor Woodrow converted a gallery space in Fitzroy into a hospital ward. This was part of the 1993 Melbourne International Festival

• Working in the state government offices in Treasury Place in buildings of a similar vintage to Willsmere and witnessing these offices being emptied of staff during the Kennett Government era

• Visiting the Cunningham-Dax collection of psychiatric art at the Victorian Artists Society whilst studying at RMIT

• Seeing the closure of psychiatric institutions as a symptom of a less caring society

• Arranging an inspection of the former Aradale Psychiatric facility in Ararat in western Victoria in 1998. Just me, the caretaker and this vast empty complex which is almost identical to Willsmere

Some of these dot points fall under the heading of political influences, but I have to remind myself that I am not necessarily painting “causes”. Instead, I am focusing on states of mind, although those states can be at least partially governed by external factors.

Consulting Rooms, oil on canvas, 42 x 61 cm

The concept of an existence outside the mainstream has always intrigued me, hardly surprising given my somewhat dysfunctional background.  For many years I tried to live a “mainstream” existence and failed.  My art practice gives me the opportunity to explore the “non-mainstream” as well as investigating the psychology of space as a metaphor for states of mind.  Perhaps there is a longing for human company in these works.  Then again, the concept of asylum also means sanctuary, refuge – that is, a safe place to be.

German psychiatrist Freda Fromm-Reichmann was one of the pioneers in the study of loneliness.  Her writings on the subject include, “Loneliness in its quintessential form is of a nature that is incommunicable by the one who suffers it.  Nor, unlike other non-communicable emotional experiences can it be shared via empathy.  It may well be that the second person’s empathic abilities are obstructed by the anxiety producing quality of the mere emanations of the first person’s loneliness.”

Art can play an important role in providing an avenue for artists to express their loneliness, their psychological pain in a creative, non-confrontational way.

Domestic Bliss, oil on canvas, 76 x 56 cm

I was tempted to title this exhibition “Lost Connections”, borrowed from the title of a book written by Johann Hari in which he discusses the causes of depression and some surprising cures.  But as Olivia Laing explains, loneliness can be the catalyst for creativity, for seeing the world with remarkable clarity.

The dynamic between sanctuary and confinement, beauty and loneliness often informs my work.  The source material may be a photograph I took a few weeks ago, or many years ago.  Light is used to create a sense of beauty or quiet contemplation in a scene that some may find disturbing.

“Glimpses Of Another World”, opens at Tacit Galleries, 191-193 Johnson St. Collingwood on 23rd March 2022.

References;

“The Lonely City” by Olivia Liang

“Lost Connections” by Johann Hari

Two People, One Artist - Gilbert & George

The expression “don’t judge a book by its cover” always comes to mind when I think of Gilbert and George.  Described as looking like repressed 1930’s bank managers, they have been confounding the art world for over 50 years. 

Matthew Collings describes them as the Morecombe and Wise of existentialism, and admires the shock value of much of their output. But he argues that there is a precedent, the work of Francisco Goya - the “father of shocks”. Like so many artists who have explored the theme of shock in their art, Gilbert and George argue that what appears on the TV news deeply shocking every day.

George Passmore (left) and Gilbert Proesch

They describe themselves as living sculptures and annoyance and provocation lie at the centre of their work.  One only has to look at their dancing song “Bend It” featured in their 1981 movie “The World of Gilbert and George” to see  they achieved that aim.

Being ineligible for government grants and teaching posts being out of the question, they were isolated and poor and decided to turn to their only resource – themselves.  They fused their art with their identity and the world around them.

Gilbert & George singing “Underneath the Arches” (DailyArt Magazine)

They decided they were going to be ’two people, one artist’.  They claimed that when they left art school they were completely lost and needed each other, no doubt at least partly due to their total eccentricity.   The major advantage of the partnership, they argue, is that there is always someone there to answer a question.  So they never have to work in a vacuum – the bane of many artists. They speak of the loneliness of many artists – especially when their work is rejected, but they always had each other to provide comfort.  They developed the concept that ‘nothing matters’.

This may explain why their naked bodies appeared more and more in their art, including the fluids that comes out of them, during the 1990’s.  Among their targets was the bible which they wanted to ridicule, texts of which appear alongside images of their naked bodies.  For 2000 years, they argue, the bible has dictated how people should behave, including images of nudity being suppressed.  They sought to confound the viewer by presenting images of shit in a decorative, colourful way.

Blood, Tears, Spunk, Piss series 1996 (Research Gate)

They have lived and worked at 12 Fournier St Spitalfields in London’s east end since the late 1960’s. It’s now a fashionable location.  But in the late 60’s the area was populated by the homeless, poor families and ‘cockney market traders’.  There were hostels nearby catering for tramps, returned servicemen damaged by their war experiences and petty criminals, all of which provided inspiration for their art.  They first met as students at St Martins School of Art in 1967 and immediately fell in love.  Two years later they appeared as “living sculptures”, painting their faces silver so they resembled robots and singing that appalling 1930’s music hall song Underneath the Arches.

Gilbert and George are inspired by their experiences of living in London.  12 Fournier St has become a shrine for their art and their reference material is carefully and meticulously referenced and catalogued so they can easily access it for future projects.  Thousands of photographic images have been reduced to contact sheets which form the basis of their reference material.  Almost all their images are taken either in their studio or within walking distance of it.  “We never felt the need to travel to exotic locations in order to be inspired”, says George.  They love the cosmopolitan nature of the East End where everyone seemed to get along quite well.

From their Dirty Words Pictures 1977 (Schirn Press)

Their “Dirty Words” pictures of the late 1970’s were based on images taken from the immediate neighbourhood and included images of the locals photographed from the windows at 12 Fournier St.  They wanted to show images of what “the city feels like or smells like”.  London was experiencing a massive garbage strike at the time and the city looked like a waste dump.  The middle class press gave their work a caning.  They were even asked “why do you have black people in your work?” But while the media complained, the public flocked to see their work.

In 2007, they were the first British artists to hold a major retrospective at Tate Modern which featured 200 of their works – thought to be one fifth of their 40 year output at that stage.  They curated the exhibition by producing an enormous scale model of the gallery space and placing miniature images of each work just so.

This exhibition was quite a coup given the suspicion with which the British art establishment had viewed them.

New Normal Pictures, White Cube Gallery (Art Limited)

Some of their work seeks to explore the intersection between masculinity, shame, anality and art.  They draw the viewer into their work by being decorative and large scale so that by the time they realize what they are looking at, it’s too late.

In April 2021, they held the exhibition “New Normal Pictures” at White Cube. In reviewing the show, The Guardian made reference to the paradox that is Gilbert and George. They were angered by the way some people saw the bright side of the Covid 19 pandemic; saying how great it is to be able to drive across London without the traffic and being able to see the stars at night without the pollution. Meanwhile tens of thousands of people were dying in misery and funerals were taking place several times a day near their home. “They are masters of provocation and proudly right wing, but they also have a compassion that would put plenty of seemingly virtuous artists to shame.”

On The Streets - Bag Men, Photograph, 2020 (White Cube)

What keeps Gilbert and George going is the sense that they are always under attack, so they need to fight back.  They have always been outsiders, despite the 2007 retrospective.  “We were never normal”.

References;

The Guardian

This Is Modern Art – BBC Channel 4, 1999

BBC Imagine