Gilbert & George, exhibition review: Two fingers to this empty art

Perhaps Gilbert & George have finally burnt themselves out, says Ben Luke
Trademark territory: one of the deliberately crude Gilbert & George banners
Gilbert & George Courtesy/White Cube
Ben Luke3 December 2015

We’ve grown accustomed to Gilbert & George’s liberal-goading and conservative-baiting antics. Their latest work is true to form, featuring 10 graffiti-like banners with slogans, all repeated three times, which, if you’re prone to Twitter-style histrionic outrage, might get your goat. They’re fighting prejudice with prejudice, they tell us.

But there’s none of that hugely inventive imagery that’s long accompanied the pair’s knowing posturing. We’re left with just words, and how thin it feels.

The banners begin with a painted red signature: “Gilbert & George say-:” followed by a deliberately crude graffito. The territory is trademark G&G: “MAKE CUNNILINGUS COMPULSORY”; “DECRIMINALISE SEX”; “BAN RELIGION”. They’re as much about language and meaning as that subject matter though — expletives not as a descriptive act but as a two-fingers gesture.

But once you’ve absorbed the words, it feels empty. And why repeat each banner three times, other than to satisfy hungry collectors? I was angered by their previous White Cube show, the Scapegoating Pictures, detecting a whiff of Islamophobia, but The Banners just prompts indifference. Perhaps Gilbert & George have finally burnt themselves out.

Tightrope Walk: Painted Images After Abstraction ★★★☆☆

Flawed but fascinating: Study for a Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne, 1982, by Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon

Also at the White Cube is Tightrope Walk, a fascinating, if flawed, painting show, taking its title from Francis Bacon’s phrase that his art was “a kind of tightrope walk between what is called figurative painting and abstraction”. Bacon himself features, along with masters such as Picasso and Matisse and contemporary painters.

The hang is often excruciating, with combinations that are the visual equivalent of shooting tooth pain, but countless gems rise above it, not least a new work by Chris Ofili and a fantastic Philip Guston. The exhibition shows how abstraction, far from negating figuration, has given painters opportunities. It reflects a medium in the rudest health.

Until January 24, White Cube (020 7930 5373, whitecube.com)

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