For some, getting drunk on gin with one’s wingman would constitute just another Monday afternoon. For UK artists Gilbert & George, it was an early chapter of a storied career. Notorious while students at St. Martin’s School of Art for their performance-art antics, the duo’s star turn came in the form of the 1970 exercise The Singing Sculpture, in which they coated themselves in gold paint and mimed to a recording of the 1930s music-hall standard “Underneath the Arches.” The nattily dressed pair has been pushing the art envelope ever since—from the intoxication-documentation short film Gordon’s Makes Us Drunk (1972) to their 2005 Venice Biennale entry, the religious-image-heavy photo-montage series “The Ginkgo Pictures.” The Turner Prize winners were recently the subject of a retrospective at London’s Tate Modern—an abridged version of which opens this month at SF’s de Young Museum.
“Gilbert and George are interested in making sure that [every] installation addresses their motto: ‘art for all,’” says exhibition curator Daniell Cornell. The artists’ trademark Edwardian attire may not immediately suggest said egalitarianism, but a sampling of their works’ titles (see: “The Dirty Words Series” and “The Naked Shit Pictures”) confirms their subjects are anything but elitist. Representing every last polite-society-confronting series the duo has created, the SF show (one of three North American stops) will feature such works as the excrement-happy Shitted (1983), the stained-glass-styled Gink (2005) and their recent memorial of the 2005 London terrorist attack, Bomb (2006). “They see themselves as a bridge between the modern art world and popular culture,” says Cornell. But for a town well-versed in bridge iconography, this British interpretation could come as a bit of a surprise.
“Gilbert & George” de Young Museum, February 16 - May 18.
For some, getting drunk on gin with one’s wingman would constitute just another Monday afternoon. For UK artists Gilbert & George, it was an early chapter of a storied career. Notorious while students at St. Martin’s School of Art for their performance-art antics, the duo’s star turn came in the form of the 1970 exercise The Singing Sculpture, in which they coated themselves in gold paint and mimed to a recording of the 1930s music-hall standard “Underneath the Arches.” The nattily dressed pair has been pushing the art envelope ever since—from the intoxication-documentation short film Gordon’s Makes Us Drunk (1972) to their 2005 Venice Biennale entry, the religious-image-heavy photo-montage series “The Ginkgo Pictures.” The Turner Prize winners were recently the subject of a retrospective at London’s Tate Modern—an abridged version of which opens this month at SF’s de Young Museum.
“Gilbert and George are interested in making sure that [every] installation addresses their motto: ‘art for all,’” says exhibition curator Daniell Cornell. The artists’ trademark Edwardian attire may not immediately suggest said egalitarianism, but a sampling of their works’ titles (see: “The Dirty Words Series” and “The Naked Shit Pictures”) confirms their subjects are anything but elitist. Representing every last polite-society-confronting series the duo has created, the SF show (one of three North American stops) will feature such works as the excrement-happy Shitted (1983), the stained-glass-styled Gink (2005) and their recent memorial of the 2005 London terrorist attack, Bomb (2006). “They see themselves as a bridge between the modern art world and popular culture,” says Cornell. But for a town well-versed in bridge iconography, this British interpretation could come as a bit of a surprise.
“Gilbert & George” de Young Museum, February 16 - May 18.
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