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Gilbert and George's 1980 Pictures and the Spectre of Nationalism in Postcolonial Britain

Gilbert and George's 1980 Pictures and the Spectre of Nationalism in Postcolonial Britain With their hallucinatory juxtapositions of medieval English iconography, imperial‐era public statuary, and indicators of contemporary urban unrest, Gilbert and George's monumental 1980 Pictures marked what many initial critics perceived as an unsettlingly political turn in the duo's work – even, some alleged, a gesture of identification with Britain's neo‐fascist right. In fact, this essay argues, much of Gilbert and George's preceding work, including their collages of Edwardian‐era picture postcards, and their canonical performances of The Singing Sculpture, was similarly oriented toward questions of national identity and belonging in a manner more philosophical than propagandistic. At a moment marked by an ascendant if internally contested effort by the political right to reconceptualize ‘Britishness’ for a postcolonial age, the artists used their self‐appointed roles as ‘living sculptures’ to emphasize the discontinuities, contradictions, and instabilities inherent to the construct of British identity, stoking an emerging set of anxieties regarding the street‐level legibility of political partisanship in a highly polarized London. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Art History Wiley

Gilbert and George's 1980 Pictures and the Spectre of Nationalism in Postcolonial Britain

Art History , Volume 44 (5) – Nov 1, 2021

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Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© Association for Art History 2021
ISSN
0141-6790
eISSN
1467-8365
DOI
10.1111/1467-8365.12614
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

With their hallucinatory juxtapositions of medieval English iconography, imperial‐era public statuary, and indicators of contemporary urban unrest, Gilbert and George's monumental 1980 Pictures marked what many initial critics perceived as an unsettlingly political turn in the duo's work – even, some alleged, a gesture of identification with Britain's neo‐fascist right. In fact, this essay argues, much of Gilbert and George's preceding work, including their collages of Edwardian‐era picture postcards, and their canonical performances of The Singing Sculpture, was similarly oriented toward questions of national identity and belonging in a manner more philosophical than propagandistic. At a moment marked by an ascendant if internally contested effort by the political right to reconceptualize ‘Britishness’ for a postcolonial age, the artists used their self‐appointed roles as ‘living sculptures’ to emphasize the discontinuities, contradictions, and instabilities inherent to the construct of British identity, stoking an emerging set of anxieties regarding the street‐level legibility of political partisanship in a highly polarized London.

Journal

Art HistoryWiley

Published: Nov 1, 2021

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