Video No. 6064. English Language Pal VHS.
An Exploration of Art on Film.
Directed by Gerald Fox.
Artists and living sculptures whose life is also their art, Gilbert and George form a unique, exciting and enduring partnership. This film, made to mark the unveiling of a new body of work based on excrement, urine, blood, sperm, tears and spit, and called 'The Fundamental Pictures', traces their history back to their first meeting at St Martin's School of Art in 1967.
It goes behind the Georgian facade of their East End house to watch them at work in their studio and follows them through their everyday lives: meals at the Market Cafe, walking through the streets of London and visiting their tailor for new suits, reviewing the collection of sexual literature and pottery from the Neo-Gothic Aesthetic Movement and drinking champagne at home with Shere Hite.
They talk about their compulsion to "take art to the edge", to show the viewer his innermost thoughts,a nd commentate on shows o their pictures in London, Shanghai and bologna, enjoying the fruits of their enormous popularity around the world.
Critics such as Andrew Graham-Dixon, Sarah Kent and David Sylvester add their voices to the continuing debate - are Gilbert and George radical revolutionaries of bastions of the old morality? - and Norman Rosenthal of the Royal Academy praises the artists' truth and grandeur.
