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The Museum of Modern Art
Course: The Museum of Modern Art > Unit 1
Lesson 6: Artist interviews- Andrés Jaque: COSMO | Young Architects Program 2015
- Gilbert & George: The Early Years
- Cai Guo-Qiang | Borrowing Your Enemy's Arrows
- Richard Serra | Equal
- "Weaving the Courtyard" by Escobedo Soliz | Young Architects Program 2016
- Artists Experiment 2014 | MoMA
- THIS IS ISA GENZKEN | MoMA
- Isaac Julien, Ten Thousand Waves | MoMA
- James Rosenquist, "F-111," 1964-65
- Lee Quinones on graffiti
- Studio Tour: Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt
- Richard Serra, "Intersection II"
- Richard Serra, "Torqued Ellipse IV"
- Richard Serra, "Band," 2006
- Wolfgang Laib, "Pollen from Hazelnut"
- Gabriel Byrne revisiting "The Quiet Man"
- Carolee Schneemann, "Up to and Including Her Limits"
- Dorothea Rockburne: Drawing Which Makes Itself
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Gilbert & George: The Early Years
Hear Gilbert & George explain how and why they invented Postal Sculptures as young art-school graduates. "Gilbert & George: The Early Years" was on view at MoMA through September 27, 2015. Learn more: http://bit.ly/1SvnaZe.
Want to join the conversation?
- is gilbert and george a brand(2 votes)
- Do we know anything about their real, personal life? Or are they keep it in secret? Do they always hide behind this "living sculpture" mask? I am really interested, where the person ends or where the sculpture starts?(1 vote)
- What was their actual artwork? Was it just the postcards? If so, why weren't they shown more?(1 vote)
Video transcript
Being living sculpture is
our lifeblood, our destiny, our romance,
our disaster, our light and life. As day breaks over us,
we rise into a vacuum and the cold morning light filters dustily
through the window. We step into
the responsibility suits of our art. Gilbert & George have
a wide range of sculptures for you. -Singing sculpture.
-Interview sculpture. -Dancing sculpture.
-Meal sculpture. -Walking sculpture.
-Nerve sculpture. -Café sculpture.
-And philosophy sculpture. So do contact us. Name, address and phone number. And nobody did,
that's very good. We didn't want to be
the art students who left college and ran to buy some bundle
of canvases, or some plaster or bronze. We thought we had something new
to say and we wanted a new form. And I remember
in the end of the school year, we had these objects
that we made, and we asked somebody to take
photographs of us holding these. And half way through we realized that we didn't need
the objects to be sculpture. That was a revelation for us. We invented Postal Sculptures
as a means of reaching a lot of people that we couldn't reach
through having a gallery. We had no representative, we couldn't
put our art on a gallery wall, but we could do Postal Sculptures. We'd go and post them,
and it would arrive the next day. Because they're what you call
the visual of the Postal Sculpture would create a three-dimensional
feeling in your brain. We managed to get
the mailing list from Konrad Fischer. 300 different people, collectors
and people who were interested in art and overnight we were
totally known in the art world. It wasn't the sort of thing
you received in the post from most galleries at that time. It had something new, it had something
very traditional about it, it had something
very polite about it. It was all the things
that the art world didn't have. So here we are with the Red Boxers,
and each part, Postal Sculpture. And they are based
on a certain period where we were
out of control in some way. Here, there is one. "Stillness, breathing through
our air makes us still breathe." The Red Boxers were
really when we became quite... unhappy, drunk,
and what do you call, political, and completely enclosed
in our rooms. Feeling the what you call
atmosphere around our bodies. It’s a lot to do with the constraints of the modern life
that we felt at that time the fear of
excessive collectivism in the art world
and in general... We still wanted to feel
that we could up every day and get out of bed being oneself, not being citizen or subject,
but to be free and individual. May we describe to you
with picture and words, the sculpture which began... on the last Saturday, misspelt,
in November 1969. We had just made some cocoa
when it began to snow... We realized you cannot
just be a living sculpture alone and leave nothing behind. So, we thought
we can leave suggestions behind, feelings behind. What is that feeling you get when you see the snow falling
when you weren't expecting it? It's very difficult to say exactly
what that magic moment of... It's not just the snow falling
and the unexpectedness. It means all sorts
of other things. It goes from childhood and
one’s relationship with other people, Christmas cards, and events
in your life, and future and past. So we positioned
ourselves at the window. As we began to look,
we felt ourselves taken into a sculpture
of overwhelming purity, life and peace,
a rare and new art piece. We thank you for being
with us for these few moments. It takes me back, it feels
emotional to read it even. Extraordinary. Everything became human for us, I think that was
the art that we wanted. If you could feel pain or happy or all these feelings
that are inside a person, like sexuality,
that became our art of that day. To be with art is all we ask. To be human.