Gilbert and George

So thanks to the accident of timing with my vacation to London I was able to attend the current retrospective exhibition of their art at the Tate Modern. I've enjoyed their work casually for many years but this was quite something to see, with the overview of (primarily but not exclusively) their picture work an absolute privilege to see lifesize rather than reproduced in book or poster form. Just the sheer range of what they've been able to do over the years is absolutely inspiring -- you really do get the sense of how they focused on their overarching artistic goals, experimented with various forms until perfecting the grid/photo/collage format and then proceeded to continually reinvent themselves within that format again and again and...again. I don't say that lightly, since there's a difference between constant return to a source and actually never retracing the same ground in the same fashion -- not easy to do given the near-constant formal elements in their work, particularly their own now utterly iconic images, an act of self-elevation and projection I'm completely fascinated by.

Unpacking everything in their work would and could take forever -- something perhaps I'll pursue more assiduously in future (or on this thread!) -- but in the exhibition I was especially drawn to how they used color over the years. The sheer brutal impact of the red tintings in the 1970s with things like Bloody Life, Red Morning and Cherry Blossoms hit me unexpectedly on viewing, this combination of suffused rage, anger and despair, even when the images were seemingly serene. The eighties efforts made me think of Keith Haring a bit in terms of color, though he and the duo have their own particular approaches -- how Gilbert and George used 'false' colors and seemingly harsh combinations often results in a perfect beauty, to my mind most vividly in Death Hope Life Fear -- seeing all four parts laid out on a massive wall was breathtaking, and I especially like the 'Life' section:

http://www.exporevue.com/images/magazine/673rivoli_2.jpg

The nineties use of color turned almost nauseous and nightmarish -- again, beautifully so, but in a unsettlingly fascinating way (and not just with the Naked Shit series by any means). This decade, meanwhile, seeing first how they experimented relentlessly with the black/white/red/gold combinations in works like Locked and Names and then how completely upended their overall approach by switching to computers and transforming their self-portraits into symmetric monsters and ghostly fragments caught against (trapped by?) interwoven and layered backgrounds -- and then topped that off colorwise with new explorations in shadings and contrasts -- made works like Fingle Fangle, Fates and Mass entrancing:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2006/01/21/bagag.jpg

To allow for a counterbalance, at dinner with my friend Angus last Tuesday I mentioned how I was looking forward to seeing the exhibition -- turns out he's no fan at all, claiming rather that Morecambe and Wise did it all before them. But possibly this just refers to "Underneath the Arches." Germaine Greer, meantime, isn't thrilled either. And I'm sure more could be said. But what do you all think?