Gilbert & George at White Cube sponsored by LV

Last night I was invited by Louis Vuitton to a very interesting art talk at White Cube with Gilbert & George.

We were entertained by them with plenty of humor for an hour. Gilbert was born in the Dolomites, Italy in 1943; George was born in Devon in 1942. Both live and work in London. Together they have participated in many important group and solo exhibitions including the largest retrospective of any artist to be staged at Tate Modern (2007) and just before that they represented Britain at the Venice Biennale (2005).

The art of Gilbert & George has always described, with utmost clarity, poignancy and intensity, the unifying experiences of being alive in the modern world. The artists have addressed those subjects that are seldom considered within the language and focus of contemporary art and culture: that which is lowly, discarded, hidden, quotidian, awkward, confrontational, unfashionable, volatile, isolated or left un-regarded.

The new show hanging at White Cube, the Urethra Postcard Pictures, reveal Gilbert & George at their most intent and artistically all seeing. These new pieces are united, compositionally, by their elements comprising “an angulated version of the sign of urethra”. This shape – a continuous rectangle of cards, with a single card in its central space – mimics the sexual symbol used by the one time theosophist C. W. Leadbetter (1853 – 1934) to accompany his signature, and as such proposes that this group of new art works is infused with a still confrontational libertarianism.

Last but not least we received a wonderful goodie-bag: the gigantic coffetable book signed by the artists… We managed to carry the 15 kg meisterstück to the Impressionist Cocktail at Christie’s (thank God it was next door) and then for dinner at the Dorchester .