Nicky Charlish
posted 22 March 2007

Given their status as the Morecambe and Wise of in-your-face-and-in-your-orifice art, it's surprising that this is Gilbert and George's first major retrospective in the UK for more than twenty-five years. Has the wait been worth it?

The duo's maxim is 'Art for All', a welcome change from those artists who think it's their duty to follow the dictum of 'sod the customer', but dress up their attitude in seemingly-radical platitudes about 'challenging' the onlooker (there is, of course, sodomy with Gilbert and George, but more of that in a moment). Gilbert (born in San Martino, Italy, in 1943) met George (born a year earlier in Devon) when they were students at St. Martin's College of Art (as it was then before it became Central St. Martin's) in 1967. They seem - commendably - to have decided early on in their career to reject the anti-representational bias that had dominated the British arts scene for decades, but, in wanting to attract attention for their work, their approach to realism has been problematic in two ways.

Is photo-journalism art? This question will never be resolved until the status of photography as an artform - which remains under discussion in some quarters - is settled. But it's almost unavoidable as this is what Gilbert and George seem to be doing here - and they do it very well, too. 'The Nature of Our Looking' (1970) is a five-part charcoal on paper sculpture showing a pastoral scene of the two artists walking by a riverside, leading us to expect a set of pretty pictures. But then the black and white photographs come in. 'Bloody Life No.3' (1975) shows liquid pouring from a bottle, and boxing ring scenes. 'Bloody Life No.16', from the same year, shows a photograph of Christ Church Spitalfields (near the street where the artists live) darkened by a red shade as if invoking memories of the City of London either swamped in a history of past suffering or summoning up fears of conflicts to come. 'Mental No.3' (1976) shows a surprisingly placid-looking Piccadilly Circus - when it was still a rent-boy and druggy haven (a police post there discourages such features now) - whilst 'The Alcoholic' (1978) shows a vagrant who - even though unconscious - has a face contorted by suffering. 'Red Morning: Trouble' (1977) includes photographs of the City when modern building had only got effectively into its stride, before the Capital's finanical hub got a skyscraper skyline to rival that of New York. These pictures all invoke the London of thirty years ago, a period that seems as dated as the Edwardian era, but the 'Six Bomb Pictures' (2006), reproductions of Evening Standard headlines about 7/7 and its aftermath - bring us bang up to date.

It's when Gilbert and George start to deal with homosexuality (incidentally, they are famously reticent about discussing the precise nature of their relationship) that they let themselves go, both as regards subject matter and, unfortunately, standards. 'The Wall' (1986) gives us a row of blue-jeaned boys looking up. Are they the wall? Or are they considering something which is walling them in, imprisoning them? If so, what is it? 'Shitted' (1983) shows excrement along with Gilbert and George open-mouthed and brown-tongued. In 'Our Spunk' (1997) the artists bend over, exposing their bum cracks. Anyone who has any knowledge, theoretical or practical, about the wider and wilder shores of human sexuality is not going to find any of what's on visual offer here that surprising. Within the pages of his famous diaries, playwright Joe Orten - the champion cottager of North London - could describe his activities with stylistic flourish and an all-important sense of detachment. To all intents and purposes what's here from Gilbert and George is - in its overall effect - public loo wall scrawl. It's a colourful, visual equivalent of a child shouting out newly discovered words in the hope of shocking its elders. The general effect is limp. At the same time, this will doubtless shock casual visitors who - unaware of Gilbert and George's reputation - have gone to Tate Modern in the expectation of seeing some 'nice' or 'improving' art. In all probability, they will scurry away horrified, and probably miss out on the depictions of street life which the artists give.

As a sort of party piece, Gilbert and George love singing the music-hall song 'Underneath the Arches', where the singers say that they 'dream our dreams away', whilst an extract from the forthcoming film The World of Gilbert and George features them singing the hymn 'Praise, my Soul, the King of Heaven' (one wonders how many viewers under the age of, say, 40, will recognise this one-time staple feature of traditional church services and school assemblies), an episode which is reminiscent of the aesthetic campery of 1920s Oxford as personified by Harold Acton and John Betjeman, but without the latter's core of inner toughness. Gilbert and George's work is powerful but, when dealing with sex, have the artists partly dreamed - or watered-down - their talents away, too? The urban gay world should receive the same tough focus and examination that the artists give to other aspects of the life of the city. Immature graffiti won't do. That being said, Tate Modern deserves to be congratulated for exhibiting art which, by its very nature, can cause a shock-horror reaction. For, by doing so, it raises questions about - and strikes a blow against - the arts' establishment's (governmentally-imposed?) desire for work which is provocative yet simultaneously inclusive, aesthetically violent yet socially vanilla. Because in this sense - if in no other - Gilbert and George show that you can't have it both ways.

Till 7 May 2007