Gilbert & George Interview in The Times

By Laura Freeman

The artists and tweedy troublemakers talk about the election, the King’s latest portrait — and what happens when one of them dies

Usually, I wouldn’t tell you an artist’s address. If they had a distinctive front door, I’d disguise it. But Gilbert and George don’t mind who knows or who comes knocking. “We have not been invaded,” Gilbert says.

“It’s rather like the telephone,” George says. “Most of our artist friends are very keen on being ex-directory because they don’t want to be troubled, but we’ve never been ex-directory. Nobody phones anyway.”

“We want them to phone,” Gilbert says earnestly. “We want them to phone. We are waiting.”

We are sitting in one of two huge studios at the back of No 12 Fournier Street in Spitalfields, east London on a sodden wet Wednesday morning. They don’t do weather chat. “It’s all God’s will,” as George’s grandmother used to say.

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Some artists seem to begrudge giving interviews. The intrusion, the nosiness, the press. “Oh, we don’t believe in that,” George says.

“We want them to know about us,” Gilbert says.

“It’s part of our job,” George says. They speak seamlessly, one picking up the thread where the other has left off, sometimes answering in tandem, but never interrupting when the other is in full swing.

The pot-stirrers and near national treasures met as art students at Saint Martin’s School of Art in 1967 and formed a partnership: two men, one artist. They made their names as “singing sculptures”, performing Underneath the Arches, a Depression-era ditty, to enthralled gallery-goers in London and New York. Later, their The Dirty Words Pictures, vast photographic montages of graffiti, anarchy and urban aggression, first shown in 1977, brought them new notoriety. They insist they don’t swear, only quote words — “Queer”, “Shit”, “C***”, “Bastard”, “Scum” — they find elsewhere.

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We are meeting to talk about their new Sky Arts documentary The Pilgrimage of Gilbert & George, which airs next Tuesday night. (If you don’t have Sky, you can catch it on Freeview.) It rather restores your faith in the high-minded, low-humoured, long-form arts film. Not everything that gets commissioned is Rob and Rylan’s Grand Tour.

Gilbert and George watched the final cut the day before. I’m dying to know what they wear to watch telly. Are they always immaculate or do they ever kick back in tracksuits? George looks perplexed. “Tracksuit?” he asks in his best high-court judge voice. Today, they are wearing flecked tweeds, green for Gilbert, russet for George, each with a silver pen in the breast pocket. Gilbert’s tie is floral, George’s patterned with whales. They entered into a civil partnership in 2008, but neither wears a ring. In photos they contrive to look waxy — like their “living sculpture” days — and I’m surprised by how warm they are in person. They both affect a flattered flutter when I tell them they’re due to be our cover boys.

George is the ringleader, taller, more forthcoming, more provoking. He’s the one who sets the cat among the pigeons. On opera and ballet reviews: “Nobody who’s not actually involved in opera or ballet would be able to follow the text. It’s so inbred.” On the Van Gogh immersive experience round the corner: “Just some populist nonsense.” On the incredible privilege enjoyed by most of the western world: “We are all spoilt brats.” Gilbert is quieter, but impish in his own way. He says their “Sunday Best” image was important from the beginning: “Two clean boys. With funny ideas behind the scenes.”