Gilbert & George are two of the UK’s most infamous artists, who over the past 40 years, have crafted pieces that have scandalised, infuriated and inspired both the art critics and the gallery-going public. This avant-garde pair has drawn delight and disgust in equal measure with their vibrantly coloured, visually complex, large-scale works that include male genitalia, body fluids and iconoclastic imagery.
Largely ignored by mainstream galleries, the Tate Modern in London is at last staging a major retrospective of their work. It is first and foremost a comprehensive exhibition exploring the duo’s diverse contributions to the world of art. However, the show is also a demonstration of how specialised production equipment has ceased to be the exclusive tool of pre-press experts and has become an instrument in the hand of the artist.
Gilbert & George are not ‘artists’ in the conventional sense: sable brushes, pigments and stretched canvasses have been jettisoned in favour of cameras, computers and scanners and a range of digital software more at home in a pre-press studio than an artist’s garret.
They are less fine artists, more multimedia artists. By working entirely with digital media and employing computer techniques to model their photographic artworks, the two have succeeded in erasing the traditional – if artificial – boundaries between art and technology, and printing and printmaking, and have created multimedia pieces that are enjoyed, criticised and classified in an indistinct domain, which was once the preserve of fine art.
The advent and development of software technology has both permitted and progressed Gilbert & George’s work. The duo’s signature multi-part photomontages were initially created using monochrome prints that were limited by the maximum size in which black and white photographic paper was produced. Since learning how to use digital techniques and gaining access to large-format laser printers, they have been able to work virtually without constraint. The fruits of their techno-art can be seen in the large-scale, vibrantly coloured, multi-framed Hooligan Pictures, produced in 2003.
Message not medium
However, in an interview with PrintWeek, Gilbert & George explain that the medium is not the message: “We think of our art as just pictures, not as photographs. We’re using photography, not being photographers. The question of our medium is more for the art profession than for the public – a normal person does not think about such things, you see a picture, you want to know what it says.”
Normal people probably do not think about these things, but anyone concerned with printing does. The medium used by Gilbert & George suits the work they produce. By their own admission their work is ‘art for all’. It has been created and reproduced using easily accessible digital processes, which were once the preserve of the typographic industry, but are now readily available to the man in the street. And their work is, of course, printed not painted and printing is, undoubtedly, the most democratising invention of all time.
As well as creating art for all, Gilbert & George are anxious to reach the maximum audience. “We publish our art in books and catalogues so that as many people as possible are able to see it,” they explain. But this is no easy task, and taking their work off the screen and duplicating it on paper in quantity requires sensitivity and understanding. The successful mass reproduction of Gilbert & George’s work is dependant upon the close working relationship between the artists and the printer, in order to render not only what can be seen, but also what the artists feel they can see.
The task of harnessing the elusive, and reproducing the indefinable, falls to fine art consultant Francis Atterbury. Over several years, he has developed an undoubted empathy with the artists, which has enabled him to accurately interpret the works and recreate on paper in four-colour what the artists view on screen. It is a testimony to Atterbury’s skill and expertise that the artistic-duo trusts his judgement and seldom view their work on press. Their faith is amply rewarded, as the mass-produced printed examples of their work are prime examples of the technical interacting with the intangible to produce work of the highest standards.
While Gilbert & George use the equipment of the graphic industry to manufacture their unique pieces of art, they also borrow from the typographic profession. Carefully chosen letters, words and phrases are used throughout their pieces: some are typeset using judiciously selected typefaces, others have been borrowed from local graffiti writers and the images and text are scrupulously laid out against a visible grid system.
Gilbert & George live and work in the aptly named Fournier Street in London’s East End. Pierre Simon Fournier was, of course, a French mid-18th century punch-cutter, type-founder, typographic theoretician and master of rococo form, who started life as a water colour artist, but soon turned to printing and became the first person to attempt a standardisation in type size.
Typographic technology
But the duo are not the only artists to have used typographic technology to create their work nor is it mere coincidence that throughout the work of these 21st century artists hovers the 18th century ghost of William Blake: poet, painter and prophet who chose printing, rather than painting, as his preferred medium by which to create a unique mythology for his prophetic vision.
In the late 1780s, Blake, a trained printer and one of the most successful engravers of his time, wanted to move beyond the restrictive letterpress method. He evolved a technique called ‘relief etching’: it was a new method for uniting text and image. Writing and illustrations were etched in reverse on copper using acid-resistant ink, then he put the plates in an acid bath that etched away any surface not covered with ink. Blake and his wife hand-coloured the pages and sewed them together.
Nearly all William Blake’s published work was produced in this manner: a method employed neither before nor since. The Victorians rediscovered Blake, but as photographic reproduction had not yet been invented they had no way to reprint the books as originally produced. So Blake’s art was put aside, his poetry was rendered into type devoid of image and he became famous simply as a poet.
But in the 20th century, with the arrival of scanners and computers, scholars and printers began reuniting the poet and the graphic artist. Modern technology has defined both William Blake and Gilbert & George, not simply as artists but multimedia artists and the long-held conventional distinctions between art and photography, printing and printmaking, technology and the more exalted handmade media are at long last being eroded.
Gilbert & George at Tate Modern retrospective runs until 7 May 2007. 10am-6pm Sunday to Thursday and 10am-10pm Friday and Saturday. Nearest tube: Southwark. Tickets are £10 and £8 concessions. To book tickets call 020 7887 8888.
CASE STUDY: PRINTER PAINTERS
Artists have been experimenting with printing for centuries. In the 16th century, Albrecht Dürer was the master of metal engraving. By the 17th century Rubens and Van Dyck were the leading Dutch exponents of acid etched intaglio work and Rembrant the most prolific, having left to posterity approximately 300 etched plates.
Then came Canaletto the chronicler of Venice; and Piranesi, the most important architectural printmaker of all time who produced around 3,000 large architectural etchings. The English tradition of printmaking started with Hogarth in the 18th century, quickly followed by the satirical Rowlandson and then William Blake.
Print making exploded in the 20th century. Picasso led the way producing more than 1,000 prints, including etchings, engravings, drypoints, woodcuts, lithographs and linocuts and almost single-handedly re-established France as the centre of printmaking where Matisse, Chagal, Miró and Dalí all experimented with print. In England, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland also did some noteworthy work.
