Hello list,
a friend of mine is working on a thesis about the interaction between
popular music and contemporary art. He has this theory that R&F may have
gotten their original inspiration for the suits and the robotic behaviour -
the visual concept - when they saw British art duo Gilbert & George do
their legendary "singing sculpture" piece at the Duesseldorf Kunsthalle in
1970.
I did a search on my saved digests of the list and found some talk (hello
Andreas!) about G & G two years ago, but the references were of a general
if affirmative kind.
What I want to know is whether there is any precise info on whether R&F
actually were there, watching the "singing sculpture" at the Kunsthalle
Duesseldorf in 1970???
Anybody knows something which goes beyond speculation? (Dirk?)
Read the following article (please excuse the length) and you will get an
idea of what G & G were up to at the time - and the importance of
Duesseldorf in their development. In the "singing sculpture" they stand on
a table, dressed in conservative three-piece suits, with silver painted
faces - and sing - for eight hours. THEY become the artwork. They have
since developed this idea to such an extent that they've become an
instantly recognisable living artwork 24/7. They remain a powerful and
enigmatic force in the artworld: always dressed alike in impeccable tweed
suits like perfect gentlemen; living in an ultra-pedantic victorian house
without a kitchen they have breakfast everyday in the same café; in
interviews they often make provocatively conservative statements, while in
their art (today mainly large photo murals) they can still be extremely
provocative in the opposite direction.
Regards,
Jan
"Marco Livingstone recounts the events early in the career of the
British duo that led to art dealer Konrad Fischer's invitation to
show at his Dusseldorf gallery in 1970.
GILBERT & GEORGE hadn't been working together more than a few months
before they started to make their own luck in late 1968. They had met
only a year earlier when Gilbert, fresh from the Munchen Akademie and
speaking no English, arrived in the Advanced Sculpture Course at St.
Martin's School of Art in London, where George was entering his third
and final year. When Gilbert returned to London the following fall,
the two neophytes decided to join forces as a way of becoming artists
"more effectively." They did not yet have a clear plan to produce art
together.
The duo began making the rounds of London galleries, including the
most obscure, offering to exhibit Shit and Cunt, 1969, a provocative
"magazine sculpture" (the now canonical self-portrait as "George the
Cunt and Gilbert the Shit"), but declining to show slides of other
works. Unsurprisingly, the two unknowns were sent packing time and
again. They were particularly persistent with the dealer and Mod
man-about-town Robert ("Groovy Bob") Fraser, who let them display
their Christmas Slide Show (which incorporated Fraser's own
handwritten seasonal greetings) in his gallery window over the
holidays in 1968. He also displayed Shit and Cunt on May 10, 1969,
for one afternoon, in a case inside his Duke Street gallery. By now,
the pair were quickly gaining in notoriety, wandering the streets of
London with multicolored metallized faces. The realization that they
had themselves become the artwork was, they say, their single most
important discovery and the basis of everything they have done since.
Among those who had heard of G&G's strange and compelling work was
the Dutch artist Ger van Elk, who had met them (accompanied by Jan
Dibbets) in their student days. Van Elk wrote the first serious
academic article about their collaborations (in Museum Journal, Oct.
1969) and was instrumental in securing them an unofficial invitation
to stage a five-hour "living sculpture" on the steps of the Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam, in November 1969; further, he persuaded the
Amsterdam gallery Art & Project to give them a show. And it was he
who indirectly proffered their biggest opportunity, when he invited
them to accompany him to the September 1969 London opening of the now
legendary touring exhibition of Conceptual art, "Live in Your Head:
When Attitudes Become Form." To their dismay, Gilbert & George had
been excluded, but they decided to make the most of the occasion by
color-metallizing their faces and standing motionless among the crowd
at the CA. Their seditious intervention proved wholly, and
effectively, dist racting. "Having heard that English artists were
being added and that Charles Harrison (the critic and theorist
associated with Art & Language] was doing the selection," George
recalls, "it didn't occur to us for one second that we wouldn't be
selected. But, fortunately, bad luck always turns to good luck. We
stole the show that evening, for certain. Konrad Fischer came up to
us and said, 'You'll come show in Dusseldorf, huh?"'
Gilbert & George couldn't believe their sudden change of fortune.
Here was the most glamorous German dealer, pursued by every ambitious
young artist, opening his doors to them. First Fischer arranged a
two-day slot at the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf in 1970, where they elected
to present Underneath the Arches, 1969--73, the artists' by now
celebrated "singing sculpture." On the spur of the moment they chose
to do it as a marathon event, as a way of really getting noticed. "We
decided only that day to do it for eight hours," notes Gilbert.
"Before that we had shown it in art schools and other venues all over
England, but always just for three minutes." As George explains, they
also acted on their canny understanding of the art audience's hunger
for souvenirs of such events: "We had little leaflets, which we had
letterpress printed, with deckle edges that we did ourselves. Written
with red ink on every one--we took piles--was 'ART LOVE TO GERMANY.'
Very embarrassing!" This now highly prized piece of signed ephemera
also included the lyrics of the song and a small drawing of the
singing sculpture.
Later that year, at their first solo show at Fischer's gallery in the
same city, they made their first sale--of Walking, Viewing, Relaxing,
1970, a three-part "charcoal on paper sculpture" measuring about
thirty-five feet in width--for what seemed to them a preposterously
large sum: [pound]1,000. Suddenly the idea of being able to earn a
living from their work had become a reality. With that money they
began a drinking binge that lasted two years, introducing into their
art and lives a new area of subject matter that was to define some of
the first and most influential of their photo pieces, by which they
soon made their reputation internationally. Today, Gilbert & George
walk the line between art and life as assuredly as in that Dusseldorf
debut, channeling their all-too-human fears, hopes, and
vulnerabilities into powerful visual statements-much as they have
done for the past thirty years."
