LAST year, the artistic double act Gilbert and George represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. Next year, they will be recognised with a vast retrospective to be staged at Tate Modern. Clearly the dashingly besuited duo, who, a bit like those buddleia that sprout between bricks, once flourished so brazenly outside the Establishment, are now enshrined in the artistic inner sanctum.
The smut and the swear-words and the taboo-smashing shock have become safely familiar to all but the primmest of modern art audiences. Does this mean that their work has lost its iconoclastic power? The title of their latest show might suggest that they are rather struggling.
It is called Sonofagod Pictures, with an impudent subtitle that inquires: Was Jesus Heterosexual? But in this age of the fatwa and the suicide bomber, an attack on the Christian faith feels like a soft option. And yet Gilbert and George aficionados — and, as probably the single most influential force on the Brit Art phenomenon, they have a lot of fans — should find this show as thought provocative as it is visually striking. The eccentric duo, who were quiet for a year or so while they mastered the digital technology used to fertile effect in this new show, are back in force.
Their vast, gridded collages glow from the walls: gaudy, lavish, extravagant, ornate. Lining the gallery, they conjure an overblown cathedral-like aura. The medieval and the postmodern seem almost to merge. The spectator enters what feels like the inner sanctum of some weird, and decidedly sinister, sect.
Gilbert and George have made images of the myriad trinkets that they have been collecting over the years and, blowing them up to enormous size, have played about making patterns, finding symmetries, creating kaleidoscope-style designs in which the artists themselves also feature, of course. The initial impression is of an almost dizzying fecundity.
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But then you move in more closely and wonder at the meaning of the symbols. The crucifix is the prevalent motif: Christ’s body split open upon it like some carcass of beef. But here too are Stars of David, Islamic sickle moons, horseshoes and wishbones, charm trinkets and mottos and leering leprechauns. The tawdry emblems of superstitious belief glint and beguile and repulse in a body of work that, typically, sets out not so much to preach as to provoke. These images raise questions about the nature of belief, about religious antagonisms and the divisions they spawn. Beneath the glitter lies a darker subtext.
This is the duality that the work of this cultural double act so typically explores. It doesn’t matter whether you are looking at it from the inside or the outside. At their best they will taunt you with both sides of the argument. And while they continue to do so their work remains relevant and strong.
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