Gilbert & George Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

THE LAWS OF SCULPTORS
1. Always be smartly dressed, well groomed relaxed friendly polite and in complete control
2. Make the world to believe in you and to pay heavily for this privilege
3. Never worry assess discuss or criticize but remain quiet, respectful and calm.
4. The lord chisels still, so don't leave your bench for long.

Gilbert & George
We try not to have ideas, preferring accidents. To create, you must empty yourself of every artistic thought.

Gilbert & George
We don't want to know what we are doing. It's much better not to know. You have to express yourselves, once you've finished a group of works you have to start all over again. It's extraordinary stuff - what an artist has to do. You finish a big group of works, then the next day you have to begin again. Forty years we've been doing that.

Gilbert & George
We want our Art to bring out the Bigot from inside the Liberal and conversely to bring out the Liberal from inside the Bigot.

Gilbert & George
Really creative thinking does not occur with regard to problems.

Gilbert & George
We think of our art as just pictures, not as photographs. We are using photography, not being photographers.

Gilbert & George
It is important to us to publish our art in books and catalogues, so as many people as possible are able to see it, but we also want them to see the real pieces. We like it very much when the pictures take over. When they're bigger than the viewer. You go to a museum to look at a picture, but we like it when the picture looks at you.

Gilbert & George
We like to think that we're forming our tomorrows, that we're making pictures that don't exist in reality, that maybe tomorrow will be a little bit more like our pictures than it would otherwise.

Gilbert & George
If you are submerged in normal life, then your view will be normal. So we have to keep separate from normal life in order to be able to say something that is not known. People come to art for something that they don't understand, that's not in their life already.

Gilbert & George
People used to refer to our art as "gay art"—though they never said the "gay art of Leonardo or Michelangelo." Much of our content used to be taboo and isn't considered that anymore, not just in the obvious ways of sexuality or bodies. The art world has moved to the point that Gilbert & George isn't on the radical edge anymore.

Gilbert & George
A clergyman once said to us, "Jealousy is a bad thing. But I must confess that I am sometimes jealous of the artist because the artist is closer to creation."

Gilbert & George
But we don't want to think. It's exhausting enough without that. We didn't think when we did the Ginkgo Pictures, at all. Afterwards we found out all this stuff about them.

Gilbert & George
George: One man naked is a male study; more than one, well... that's quite serious - two men naked are more naked than one.

Gilbert & George