ART OF GILBERT AND GEORGE FROM THE 1970s AND 1980s
IS SUBJECT OF MUSEUM’S NOTATIONS EXHIBITION
2 May - 2 November 2008
Philadelphia Museum of Art www.philamuseum.org

Art by Gilbert & George can be seen in a traveling exhibition through US, organized by Tate Modern/London, which ends in the Brooklyn Museum, 3 Oct. 2008 - 11 January 2009.

On 1st May 2008 the Philadelphia Museum of Art honors the art of British artists Gilbert & George with a special installation of their work from the Museum's collection and supplemented by additional loans: included are 13 pictures indicative of the major phases of their art from the 1970s and 1980s.

The title “Notations” comes from the 1968 book by American composer, writer, and visual artist John Cage, who is wellknown for his experimental approach to the arts. Cage’s Notations was an international and interdisciplinary anthology of musical scores by avant-garde musicians that also embraced contributions from visual artists and writers. At the same time Notations was an exhibition in book form, in which the scores doubled as drawings.

fig.: Red Morning Drowned, 1977. Gilbert & George: George Passmore (English, born 1942) and Gilbert Proesch (English, born Italy 1943). Gelatin silver prints. Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In the 70s Gilbert & George presented monochromatic compositions; in the 80s bolder clashes of images and colors. Gilbert and George won the Turner Prize in 1986 and represented the United Kingdom at the 2005 Venice Biennale.

Living Sculptures
Gilbert and George, who have met in 1967 while training as sculptors at St. Martin’s School of Art in London, present themselves in sceneries: dressed in suits and displaying decorous manners, Gilbert & George present an image at odds with the passion with which they expose desires and fears: you can find in their work isolation, unhappiness and despair, nature, urban beauty, .... social marginality, religion, AIDS crisis, multiculturalism ... Gilbert & George use their art as a vehicle through which the universals of the human experience are made eloquent. The artists worked through the years on the development of an unique visual language.

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