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Lot Essay
'In The Fundamental Pictures of 1996, the body itself has become a visionary universe, defined by its fluid and excretory elements. Delicate souls might name these components faeces, urine, semen, saliva, etc., but Gilbert & George, with their familiar preference for rock-bottom Anglo-Saxon words like LIFE and DEATH, offer the no-nonsense equivalents of SHIT, PISS, SPUNK, SPIT, BLOOD and TEARS, reducing themselves and the rest of us poor mortals to biological truths both as coarse as real life and as remote as the Book of Genesis,' (R. Rosenblum, Gilbert & George: The Fundamental Pictures 1996, Sonnabend Gallery, New York, 1997, n.p.).
Engulfing our field of vision with gigantic yellow primordial amoebic-like forms, Gilbert & George's Pissed (1996) is one of the largest works from their Fundamental Pictures series, first exhibited the following year at Sonnabend Gallery, New York. Since their first collaborations out of art school in the late 1960s, Gilbert & George have expressed their 'art-life' through the twinning of their corporeal selves as both object and subject of their art. Evolving from the Naked Shit Pictures of 1994 where the aging artists explored their vulnerability through their nudity, the Fundamental Pictures reversed this process and take on an abstract beauty, presenting the physical components of the human body as icons on an almost colossal scale. Of these materials the artists explained, 'we consist of the stuff. It's our nourishment, it belongs to us, we're part of it, and we show this in a positive light' (Tate Gilbert & George Major Exhibition, www.tate.org.uk [accessed 7 March 2013]).
In The Fundamental Pictures, Gilbert & George the artists investigated samples of bodily fluids under a microscope, representing them in striking flat primary colours and in the artists' quintessential grid format. Pissed presents six enlarged hand-coloured microscopic images of urine, overlaid with a naked and stumbling George held up by the smartly dressed Gilbert. Magnified beyond recognition, the bodily fluid becomes an abstract expanse upon which the artists have placed themselves; in doing so, Gilbert & George have freed the liquid from its connotations as a base material and allow its structural beauty to overwhelm the image. Seemingly enchanted by the complex figurative patterns that were formed by the various bodily fluids through the dispersions on the slide, of the crystallised forms in urine the artists noted that 'you find pistols, flowers, crucifixes,' (Tate Gilbert & George Major Exhibition, www.tate.org.uk [accessed 7 March 2013]). Gilbert & George present urine not as the substance that elicits our revulsion, but as the organic output of our anatomy, highlighting the dendrite-like blossoms of its structural makeup, which likens it to our own chromosomes. Gilbert & George's echoing of the building blocks that comprise our own bodies with the urine which we discard as waste acts not just as a defiant statement regarding the social perception of bodily functions but also pushes the limits of art's ability to convey the fundamental realities of existence, thus presenting a stark and visceral experience of being alive. Of this series Robert Rosenblum has averred that, 'the body itself has become a visionary universe, defined by its fluid and excretory elements. Delicate souls might name these components faeces, urine, semen, saliva, etc., but Gilbert & George, with their familiar preference for rock-bottom Anglo-Saxon words like LIFE and DEATH, offer the no-nonsense equivalents of SHIT, PISS, SPUNK, SPIT, BLOOD and TEARS, reducing themselves and the rest of us poor mortals to biological truths both as coarse as real life and as remote as the Book of Genesis' (R. Rosenblum, Gilbert & George: The Fundamental Pictures 1996, Sonnabend Gallery, New York, 1997, n.p.).
There is also humour at play here, with wit and intelligence being at the core of Gilbert & George's oeuvre. Not identified strictly by the bodily fluid exhibited as in most other works in the series, Pissed takes on a multitude of double entendres. By playing on the title's definition in British slang to mean 'intoxicated', the artists' depiction of a clothed Gilbert countered by a naked and stumbling George highlights the word's dual-meaning in this setting. With drinking and intoxication a well-documented feature of the artists' 'art-life' since the late 1960s, it is only natural to further extend the play on words to the British slang word for 'drunkards': Piss Artists. In Pissed, Gilbert & George are not only referencing their own life history but also the materials which constitute their artistic practice. By not repeating this pairing in its obverse, that is by not also depicting a naked Gilbert and clothed George, the artists emphasise the extent to which the veneer of themselves as British dandies maintains a knife-edge tension between absolute control and complete mental abandonment. Their consideration of the carnality that lay underneath their repressive uniform of British propriety began as early as the 1970s with the magazine sculpture George the Cunt and Gilbert the Shit of 1969. The juxtaposition of the commonplace and the crass with their iconic visages, and especially so later on with their literal nakedness and almost unmediated self-exposure, opened a candid dialogue for the viewer to share in the imperfections of humanity, a discourse which has only been further intensified in Pissed. Gilbert & George have not presented these base materials for our collective revulsion and disgust, but in an effort to unite us all in common feeling and existence. 'We think it is important to say about taboos that a lot of people think we are very free, mad, crazy fuckers who want to impose our free way of life on them,' George has explained, 'this is not at all the case. We are filled with taboos. We are terrified of shit. It is an adventure together with the public, together with the viewer,' (Gilbert quoted in interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist, London, August 1995, in Gilbert & George, Magasin 3 Stockhol Konsthall, Stockholm, 1997-1998, p. 85).
Engulfing our field of vision with gigantic yellow primordial amoebic-like forms, Gilbert & George's Pissed (1996) is one of the largest works from their Fundamental Pictures series, first exhibited the following year at Sonnabend Gallery, New York. Since their first collaborations out of art school in the late 1960s, Gilbert & George have expressed their 'art-life' through the twinning of their corporeal selves as both object and subject of their art. Evolving from the Naked Shit Pictures of 1994 where the aging artists explored their vulnerability through their nudity, the Fundamental Pictures reversed this process and take on an abstract beauty, presenting the physical components of the human body as icons on an almost colossal scale. Of these materials the artists explained, 'we consist of the stuff. It's our nourishment, it belongs to us, we're part of it, and we show this in a positive light' (Tate Gilbert & George Major Exhibition, www.tate.org.uk [accessed 7 March 2013]).
In The Fundamental Pictures, Gilbert & George the artists investigated samples of bodily fluids under a microscope, representing them in striking flat primary colours and in the artists' quintessential grid format. Pissed presents six enlarged hand-coloured microscopic images of urine, overlaid with a naked and stumbling George held up by the smartly dressed Gilbert. Magnified beyond recognition, the bodily fluid becomes an abstract expanse upon which the artists have placed themselves; in doing so, Gilbert & George have freed the liquid from its connotations as a base material and allow its structural beauty to overwhelm the image. Seemingly enchanted by the complex figurative patterns that were formed by the various bodily fluids through the dispersions on the slide, of the crystallised forms in urine the artists noted that 'you find pistols, flowers, crucifixes,' (Tate Gilbert & George Major Exhibition, www.tate.org.uk [accessed 7 March 2013]). Gilbert & George present urine not as the substance that elicits our revulsion, but as the organic output of our anatomy, highlighting the dendrite-like blossoms of its structural makeup, which likens it to our own chromosomes. Gilbert & George's echoing of the building blocks that comprise our own bodies with the urine which we discard as waste acts not just as a defiant statement regarding the social perception of bodily functions but also pushes the limits of art's ability to convey the fundamental realities of existence, thus presenting a stark and visceral experience of being alive. Of this series Robert Rosenblum has averred that, 'the body itself has become a visionary universe, defined by its fluid and excretory elements. Delicate souls might name these components faeces, urine, semen, saliva, etc., but Gilbert & George, with their familiar preference for rock-bottom Anglo-Saxon words like LIFE and DEATH, offer the no-nonsense equivalents of SHIT, PISS, SPUNK, SPIT, BLOOD and TEARS, reducing themselves and the rest of us poor mortals to biological truths both as coarse as real life and as remote as the Book of Genesis' (R. Rosenblum, Gilbert & George: The Fundamental Pictures 1996, Sonnabend Gallery, New York, 1997, n.p.).
There is also humour at play here, with wit and intelligence being at the core of Gilbert & George's oeuvre. Not identified strictly by the bodily fluid exhibited as in most other works in the series, Pissed takes on a multitude of double entendres. By playing on the title's definition in British slang to mean 'intoxicated', the artists' depiction of a clothed Gilbert countered by a naked and stumbling George highlights the word's dual-meaning in this setting. With drinking and intoxication a well-documented feature of the artists' 'art-life' since the late 1960s, it is only natural to further extend the play on words to the British slang word for 'drunkards': Piss Artists. In Pissed, Gilbert & George are not only referencing their own life history but also the materials which constitute their artistic practice. By not repeating this pairing in its obverse, that is by not also depicting a naked Gilbert and clothed George, the artists emphasise the extent to which the veneer of themselves as British dandies maintains a knife-edge tension between absolute control and complete mental abandonment. Their consideration of the carnality that lay underneath their repressive uniform of British propriety began as early as the 1970s with the magazine sculpture George the Cunt and Gilbert the Shit of 1969. The juxtaposition of the commonplace and the crass with their iconic visages, and especially so later on with their literal nakedness and almost unmediated self-exposure, opened a candid dialogue for the viewer to share in the imperfections of humanity, a discourse which has only been further intensified in Pissed. Gilbert & George have not presented these base materials for our collective revulsion and disgust, but in an effort to unite us all in common feeling and existence. 'We think it is important to say about taboos that a lot of people think we are very free, mad, crazy fuckers who want to impose our free way of life on them,' George has explained, 'this is not at all the case. We are filled with taboos. We are terrified of shit. It is an adventure together with the public, together with the viewer,' (Gilbert quoted in interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist, London, August 1995, in Gilbert & George, Magasin 3 Stockhol Konsthall, Stockholm, 1997-1998, p. 85).