Artists Gilbert & George open their own gallery, say museums are ‘too packed’

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By Webdesk


Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN
Interview by Christiane Amanpour, CNN

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Alex Hardie, CNN

Famous artist duo Gilbert & George, who describe themselves as two men who are one artist together, have unveiled a new gallery in London dedicated to their work.

The pair – Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore – have been working together for six decades, creating absurdist performance art and image-based works around the idea that the artists are “living sculptures” – and that everything they do is art.

The Gilbert & George Center’s first show, “The Paradisical Pictures,” opens to the public on April 1, showcasing a series of hallucinatory large-scale mixed media works that look like stained glass and incorporate religious and nature motifs as well as self-portraits.

Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour ahead of the launch, Prousch said: “New museums no longer have the space and there’s a limit to what they can show.

“We started with the idea that we wanted to be seen, and the only way to be seen is to build your own little museum… They’re too full of other artists.”

Christiane Amanpour meets Gilbert & George

In 2021, the artists told the Financial Times in an interview that “all the museums are awake now”, with Prousch saying the Tate has 23 of their works that “never show them”. He added, “Right now it’s all black art, all women’s art, all this art and that art. Go check out Tate Modern, I’m sure they don’t have (Francis) Bacon on.”

Their comments resurfaced last year, with critics pointing out that their comments go against their “art for all” ethos.

Others did not mince words. Nigerian artist and academic Chika Okeke-Agulu posted on Instagram in October 2022: “These two white British men are getting their own museum because [B]lack of people and women have taken over the art institutions of the white man.”

The artists did not discuss race or gender during the recent conversation with Amanpour, and when CNN Style contacted Gilbert & George about the artists’ past statements after the interview, a representative declined to comment.

A history of provocation

"The paradise pictures," a series of stained-glass-like mixed-media works are free to enter, as are all the shows in the gallery.

“The Paradisical Pictures,” a series of stained glass-esque mixed-media works, is free to enter, as are all the shows in the gallery. Credit: Joe Maher/Getty Images

In the CNN interview, the artists indicated that they are political outliers because of their conservative beliefs.

“For years in Britain it was a bad thing to say you’re conservative; it was like you were weird or something,” Passmore told Amanpour. “We always vote conservative because we like to vote for the winning party… We think conservative is more normal; the other side is more foreign, more revolutionary, more communist or more atheist or something weird. Conservative means normal, average.”

But Prousch and Passmore have long been provocative in their work, taking photograms of streams of urine, feces and Catholic iconography, showing themselves unfit – a rarity – and hunched over in the 1994 self-portrait “Bum Holes.” In an early diptych together , from 1969, the young artists wore cut-out letters on their suits that read ‘George the C***’ and ‘Gilbert the S***’.

When asked if they considered themselves ‘eccentric’, de Passmore replied, ‘Certainly not. We’re normal – normally weird,” adding, “We don’t want to be weird because traditionally all artists were weird, with sandals and tobacco pipes. and so. And we don’t want to be normal, because who wants to be like everyone else? But being weird and normal at the same time is a good balance, we think.”



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