Describe Gilbert & George…
Gilbert: We are an ‘it’. We are one artist.
So you don’t disagree when you make art?
Gilbert: No, because our system is based on us so we don’t have to. We take images at the beginning and we don’t even know which one took the images. It is not important.
George: It is the opposite of the traditional artist sitting in front of a canvas wondering what to do. It’s just not part of the process. We couldn’t change it if we wanted to.
Gilbert: We can never change our mind. We never see the work, only when it is finished. Something only when it’s hung in the gallery.
You’ve worked with many different bodily excretions – you dedicated a whole exhibition to shit, for instance, and other pictures have included images of blood, piss, spunk and sweat. Which of these has been you favourite or most interesting excretion?
Gilbert: The one that became most interesting is piss because we found incredible formations.
George: So much variety. Crucifixes, flowers…
Gilbert: And guns, in the piss. There were 20th Century machine guns, in the piss.
George: The shit series was more difficult to make.
Was it your own?
George: Oh, yes. Somebody recently asked me where we got it from and we simply said “Harrods”.
Did you change your diet in any way to make those pictures?
George: Good Lord no, we’re not at all technically minded like that.
What artists do you admire?
Gilbert: We don’t look to artists.
George: All the ones that got into trouble. We admire the vision of Van Gogh, Rembrant. All visionaries in some way. We hate abstract art.
Too decadent?
George: We think it’s boring.
Do you like fashion?
Gilbert: We are not interested in fashion.
But you wear those fantastic suits.
George: They are not fantastic, they are totally normal.
But they have become fantastic because you wear them all the time – they’ve become your trademark. Who makes them, but the way?
George: Just a local tailor on Hackney Road. We used to have one on our street by he’s dead.
Gilbert: Our suits help our art, they create an image of the total establishment, a normal person.
George: Our suits help our art by creating an image of a normal person. A majority of the general public expect a crazy artist but when we show up it’s more formidable, don’t you think?
Do you wear suits everyday?
Gilbert: We have working suits where you don’t see the dirt so much. They’re darker.
You mean they don’t show up stains?
George: Quite!
Your work is very much about a routine and fixed aesthetic – is this something that you also apply to your lives?
George: We are very ordered. We have to be very methodical and very organised in order to let our brains free to be crazed. If we led a crazy life we’d be finished now, we think. We are up at seven, straight to the Market Café for breakfast, straight back to the studio, back to the Market Café for lunch at eleven thirty and then we work until five or six. Now, today, we have stopped because we have odd jobs to do. You are one of our odd jobs!
What do you eat when you go to the café? Do you have the same thing every day?
George: No, no, no. It’s the best English food anywhere in Britain. Very inexpensive and good quality. It’s very sophisticated. It’s not a greasy spoon. Today we had a very special suet pudding with ham and onion.
Gilbert: They have boiled tongue, braised lamb, loin of pork. He’s an artist. He creates all these puddings especially for George. Spotted dick…
As you live near Brick Lane, you must also pop out for the odd curry?
Gilbert: Never. We used to. We now have very simple dinning arrangements.
What do you do when you’re not working?
Gilbert: We don’t go dancing anymore. Stopped dancing.
George: We used to go to many different places. But you know, in the late ’60s you couldn’t have a nightclub unless you had a dinner licence. So there was this club in a basement off Carnaby Street and, to get around the law, as you collected your ticket a drag queen would hand you a paper plate with a slice of pastrami on it which you immediately dumped in the bin when you got round the corner.
So you don’t dance anymore…
Gilbert: We only go to restaurants in the evening to relax. We don’t go to nightclubs. We think eating is much more relaxing than dancing. We feel that we cannot speak to anybody if we go to nightclubs.
Do you listen to music?
George: We don’t listen to it.
Gilbert: Never listen to it.
Never?
Gilbert: Not on song. A lot of the music we’ve heard on Top Of The Pops is simply rubbish.
George: Pop stars deal with very few issues, don’t you think?
Gilbert: We used to love it.
George: It used to be quite amusing, we liked punk, we liked council house punk. We used to go to the same disgusting clubs as The Sex Pistols.
Gilbert: Dirty filthy gay clubs!
George: Horrible seedy places, disgusting dirty places.
Not any more?
George: Nowadays only restaurants, but those clubs were amazing.
Gilbert: So dirty! So physically dirty, because you see, they were more or less forbidden.
Was this time a great inspiration for you?
Gilbert: They were full of politicians and the cheapest tarts straight off the bus from Scotland.
And those places are full of spunk and piss, right?
Gilbert: Full of it!
George: It’s like that chap who recently cut up his girlfriend and ate her. He made her into a Spaghetti Bolognese. At the end of the trial the judge said, ‘You, young man, part of your downfall is because of the films like Silence‘ … what is it?
It’s Silence Of The Lambs.
George: Ah yes, he said he killed his girlfriend because of these films and the prisoner said, “M’Lord, films like that come from people like me, not the other way around!”
He actually made her into a Spaghetti Bolognese?
George: Oh yes, although everybody’s into foreign food these days.
Gilbert: Pasta, Pasta, Pasta.
Do you watch TV?
George: A little, just before we go to dinner. We like documentaries.
How about reading?
Gilbert: George reads day and night.
What so you like reading, George?
George: Sex. Erotica. Erotic poetry. It’s always the same bloody story.
Do you have a secretary to help out?
George: We lost our secretary a long time ago. We’ve got an answering machine now and I must say, it’s a lot more efficient and slightly more attractive.
Credits
Text Stuart Shave
Image © Gilbert & George