Before Gilbert & George there were almost no artist collaborators. After them, there have been a few more, but perhaps none who work so closely together or for such an extended length of time.
Often, art is thought of as a particularly solitary occupation; the single-minded imagination of an individual creative genius, working to represent a unique world view.
How can inspiration be shared?
Artistic collaboration is difficult not only because it means giving up these and other common ideas about the nature of the artist, but also because visual art comes as a single product, with a need for compositional unity and internal coherence. It isn’t like film, which almost requires a team. It is also different from a piece of music, which more easily allows for harmonious parts, alternating tempo, etc. Gilbert and George are not Lennon & McCartney.
Yet G&G have such a close understanding that they work as one. Like many long-established couples (it is getting on for forty years now) they can complete each other’s sentences: but there is more to it than familiarity. From the beginning of their career, they have been able to share ideas and processes to present a seamlessly unified vision: they are two quite different men, but they combine to make one artist. It is impossible – for me, at least – to identify George’s input or separate out Gilbert’s bit.
Does anyone out there think they can?

One critique of the Gilbert & George exhibition has been that it doesn’t speak to women.
Is this sexism?
As I mentioned in my last posting, the history of art is full of sex – mostly heterosexual and mostly created from a male point of view. It is only very recently – since about the beginning of G&G’s career in fact – that women artists have been actively acknowledged, and only in the last few decades have they begun to even remotely nudge the balance towards greater equality (and many would say there’s still along way to go). But does equality in practice mean equality in representation?
Gilbert & George do not objectify or disparage women in their art: in fact, there are no women to be seen. Does this inevitably mean they and their art are prejudiced against women? The homoerotic nature of some of the pictures on show, in addition to the representation of rent-boys and other of the London dispossessed marks, for many people, a sufficiently bold incursion into new territory.
How far should an artist go to be inclusive?
And if they aren’t does it follow that they demean those they exclude?

Looking at a few of the visitors’ reponses to the G&G show makes it clear how their work generates strong feelings, although these feelings are often quite different, even opposite! The occasional comment deprecates MAM for supporting them and their ideas, yet a few visitors congratulate the gallery for bringing these issues to light. Some viewers react negatively to the provocative subject matter and the forceful graphics, while others salute their bravery and openness. Some folk find their homosexual imagery empowering, others are disgusted. As someone who teaches art history for a living, I can’t help but put this work into the bigger context of picture making over the past few decades, even centuries. There is a lot of sex and violence in most art museums! In the past it was in the service of religious or secular power, and then, for a hundred years or so the feelings and expression of the artist became more important. Gilbert and George came of age in a particular time; after a decade of cool, conceptual art, where the abstract idea had primacy over the fears and phobias of the maker. When they evoked religion and beauty, these were subjects which hadn’t been addressed by contemporary artists for a number of years – and openly homosexual tendencies had not been the subject of art for centuries! And yet none of these are foreign to humanity – and art is meant to be about the human condition, isn’t it?
I’d be interested to know what the blogosphere thinks…