Gilbert & George

Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Exhibition Catalogue, Bordeaux, CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain; Basel, Kunsthalle; Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts; Madrid, Palacio de Velàzquez, Parque del Retiro; Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus; London, Hayward Gallery, Gilbert & George: The Complete Pictures 1971-1985, 1986-1987, p. 80, illustrated in colour

Following their meeting at St. Martin’s School of Art in 1969, Gilbert & George very quickly began to work together on a body of work which has now stretched across their entire artistic lives. Initially concentrating on their own bodies as “Living Sculptures”, they conceived of an art which directly reflected life as they lived it. In other words everything they did, thought or felt became their art and was recorded as such. They were constantly on “show” and the “gallery” was their lived environment. In the early 1970s, they began to use photography, initially as the most direct medium with which to record their lived experience. As such, they developed a highly unique visual language which involved the montage of images within a formal framework which acted as the stage set for their existence.

Bad Thoughts No. 5 comes from an early series of nine works on the theme. Choosing a highly difficult subject to represent, which includes notions of the private and the evil, each work in the series was photographed in their now legendary home in Fournier Street, London. At the time they had recently moved in and the  walls and floors remain stark and bear. In each image, Gilbert and George are separated, on their own in the corners of the room or facing the walls. Often facing away from each other, here they are trying to make an intangible feeling tangible. Photographed from above, each of the four images in the present work shows the figures in a moment of private reflection and the highly charged compositional dynamic forms a cross as its constructive focus. Sharply dressed in the manner of the classic Englishmen, as they always are, Gilbert & George look lost in thought. Drawn to the composition by its luscious scarlet red pigmentation, the viewer is immediately aware that this stunning colour can also signal danger.