What do you do when you are the two most famous contemporary artists in the UK, are you at the top of your game and itching to conquer the international world of art? This was the question of the London -based Gilbert & George duet in 1993, and their answer at the time, as counter -intuitive, was China.
The controversial couple have long divided British art critics whether they are national treasures or simply, as they once announced that the influential London standard specialist Brian Xiel has announced “sow art.”
Graduates of the St. Martin Art School in London, Gilbert and George For the first time, they appeared as performers of performance and live sculptures before moving on to large -scale photo producers designed to shock, depicting racist skinh, human faeces, nudity and sexual acts, often with the duo within the frames, looking at approving.
The confrontation style was not without precedent. Already in the 50s and 60s, the London School – operating mainly from the notorious semen Soho – was managed by Francis BaconThe violent brush, the explicit men’s naked of Lusian Freud and the layered, at first glance ad hoc work by Frank Auerbach. In the 80’s Gilbert and George, they attracted an updated version of this kind of attention. They were gay living together in an 18th -century house in the then running at the Spitalfields area of East London, always seen smartly dressed in dark suits, drinking tea from China Cup or Downing G&Ts. They presented conservative, but nevertheless their work stunned and divided the art community, leaving as offensive as others were amazed. He works, sold for huge sums, and it was difficult to find someone in British art or otherwise who would not recognize Dapper’s duo on the street.
Gilbert & George at The Gilbert & George Center in London, in 2023. Photo: Getty Images
So, after securing the status of a local star, they decided to take some of their most famous tracks on the road, presented on massive sails and in stained glass, not Paris or New York, but inexplicable to those outside their circle , Beijing and Shanghai.
James Burch has trained in the fine art of Christie before opening his own gallery in 1983 on the London Royal Road specializing in surrealists and emerging young British artists (scandalous YBA), led by the likes of the likes Damian Harst and Tracy EminS In fact, it was the eponymous gallery of Birch the young one – now Sir – Grayson Perry his first show in 1984 (and his second, in 1985). Burch was also interested in Russia and is famous organized a show for a late Bacon career at the Moscow Central House of Artists in 1988 (Lean Times for Soviets, with one participant in the book of visitors, “We need Bacon rather than Francis Bacon ”). The Memoir of the Birch of the experience, Bacon in Moscow (2022), is a role tale of the avant -garde, Communist Commissioners and a Soviet cultural institution, divided between the terrified of the bourgeois Western art and the people who eager to survive it, all during the dying days of the USSR.
By james art 
