Gilbert & George : a Portrait - Hardcover

Farson, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002558572 ISBN 13: 9780002558570

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1999

Synopsis

The candid, revealing inside story of one of the great and most original art acts of our time: the enigmatic ‘living sculptures’ based in Spitalfields in London’s East End, who are now widely recognised as perhaps the most important living artists on the international scene.

Written with the full cooperation of Gilbert and George, this will be a definitive biography (with illustration sections) rather than a pure art book: very much along the lines fo the author’s vivid, intimate, bestselling portrayal of THE GILDED GUTTER LIFE OF FRANCIS BACON.

Gilbert and George have marketed their work with extraordinary single-mindedness since they appeared together in the late 1960s. Their technique – taking thousands of photographs, assembling a theme in panels and dyeing them in vivid colours – is unequalled. Whether you love them or hate them, they are two of the most exciting artists alive. Their relationship appears odd to the outsider, but is undeniably a great love story. Their appearance (identical three-buttoned suits) has become their trademark.

About this title

About the Author

Born in 1927, Daniel Farson was the author of bestsellers including Jack the Ripper, The Man Who Wrote Dracula and Never A Normal Man. He was a TV reporter, photographer, biographer and art critic.

From the Back Cover

Gilbert and George are unquestionably among the most important and original artists of our time, and in Daniel Farson they found both a doughty (if critical) champion and a stimulating companion. The author of 'The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon' spent a lot of time in their company over several years – in Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai, New York, Stockholm, Paris, London and Devon – and his manuscript was on the desk of his house in Appledore when he died in November 1997.

In this delightful and engagingly informal portrait, Gilbert and George reminisce about their family upbringing in the country (George in Totnes, Gilbert in the Italian Dolomites), their immediate friendship at St Martin’s School of Art in the late 1960s, their life in Spitalfields ‘stripped to the best essentials’, and their relish of the mixed cultures of the East End. They proclaim certain areas to be no-go: their art is not autobiographical, and ‘we believe we deal with sex in the gentle way we want to in our pictures. If sexual confession was a way of changing society we’d do it, but we believe in doing it through our pictures.’

With their distinctive trademark single-breasted, three button suits and their famously studied but courteous composure, Gilbert and George set out as artists without a gallery, an almost blasphemous conception at the time. From living, and singing, sculptures, they developed a line in controversial subject-matter that extends from the Dirty Words pictures to The Naked Shit Pictures and The Fundamental Pictures. As exponents of photo-based art, they are, as writer David Sylvester has remarked, perhaps second only to Andy Warhol.

One of the pleasures of this book is seeing how so many critics (including Farson himself) have come to recognise the artists’ vision and to regard some of their work as among the major pictures of the century.

Robert Violette is an editor and publisher based in London. He has edited and produced many books by Gilbert and George over the last ten years, including 'The Words of Gilbert and George' and catalogues for their exhibitions in London, New York, Moscow, and China.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0002558572
• ISBN 13: 9780002558570
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256