‘Too soothing’: why have music-hating art duo Gilbert & George gone orchestra mad? An interview with the artists ahead of their Hayward Gallery show
By Amy Fleming
Gilbert & George are excited. And proud. And smell so good that I’m tempted to ask what colognes they’re wearing. We’ve all just arrived at the Hayward Gallery on London’s South Bank, where their forthcoming show, 21st Century Pictures, is mid-hang.
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The artists may be in their 80s, but all the work here was made in the last 25 years, and the gallery vibrates with rudeness, colour, contrarianism and cheek, their often vast creations luxuriating, as always, in warts-and-all humanity.
Perhaps the most contrarian thing about this show is that there’s going to be an accompanying orchestral extravaganza at the neighbouring Royal Festival Hall. Musical pieces will be performed by the Philarmonia, picked in order to explore Gilbert & George’s themes of sex, money, race and religion (collectively, the title of a massive four-part artwork). Their art will be projected on to screens during the performance.
This all goes against much of what Gilbert & George stand for. Just last year George dismissed an immersive Van Gogh experience as “some populist nonsense”. But most of all, the event flies in the face of their longtime motto: “Music is the enemy.” I want to talk to you about music, I say as provocatively as possible, but they decline to rise to the bait. “I was a choirboy, after all,” says Gilbert.
“That’s an entirely different matter,” quips George, to guffaws around the room. But Gilbert continues: “I was even in a Bach choir, once. I must have been 18 or 19 because it was when I went to the Art Academy in Munich.”
Their big break as artists was musical, too, singing Underneath the Arches – the 1932 ode to homelessness – together. So are you a good singer as well, I ask George. “Of course,” says Gilbert. “But it was not important, the singing.”
“Coming from darkest Devon and from Italy,” says George, the Devonian, “we suddenly realised there were so many people who were in trouble in cities, and we could see in every corner there were tramps and young people in trouble.”
