Tag Archives: My desk

‘Magazine Sculpture’, Gilbert and George,1969

On a recent trip to the Whitechapel Gallery, I bought a postcard of one of my favourite images, Magazine Sculpture by Gilbert and George, to put up on my desk. It is such a joyous celebration of irreverence, an act of self-critique and parody intended to preempt the criticism the artists knew would inevitably be levelled against them by the art establishment and public alike. Indeed Gilbert and George were censored throughout their early career, and I know for a fact that my print of Fuck from their Dirty Words exhibition at the Serpentine makes some people uncomfortable. Despite their static capture in these photographs, the pair seem so much more animated than in later ‘living sculptures’, which are paradoxically undynamic.

Even if I were ever to run into Gilbert and George in their East London neighbourhood, (I’ve tried) and see them in three-dimensional reality, I can’t believe that they would have as much affect as in this fabulous double shot.