144 BESART / GILBERT & GEORGE 145 BESART / GILBERT & GEORGE Gilbert & George Gilbert (1943, San Martino, Italy) and George (1942, Devon, United Kingdom) met in 1967 when studying at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, in London, and they have been working together since then as a single entity. Since the end of the 1960s they have been living in Spitalfields, a neighbourhood in London’s East End, close to the City of London. The Singing Sculpture (1969) was the title of the performance with which the artists assumed themselves as a ‘living sculpture’ – literally, their life as art – and with which they presented themselves to the art world in the 1970s, fast gaining international recognition. Their ‘performance’ consisted of both artists, their skin painted in a single colour (sculpture), standing on a table (pedestal) singing a folk song about the daily life of two wanderers. The notion of ‘art for all’ is the driving force behind their art: work relating to daily life in a direct and accessible manner. Both artists state that all the sub- jects they wanted to deal with were found in the streets around their house and that the entire world (referring to the notion of Babylon) is condensed in those London streets. Concerns, issues and social taboos were simultaneously mixed with a questioning of artistic conventions, translated into a language that used performances, video, drawings and photography. Since the 1980s Gilbert & George have chosen to mainly work with large-size photography, with their self- representation always in dialogue with religious symbols, graffiti, excrements and newspaper headlines overlapping the images of their ageing bodies. The work Devout (2004) is represented in panels (which became their signature style) comprised of a grid of varying numbers, with large life-size colourful rep- resentations using primary colours. In this case, their focus, frequently repeated in their work, is the Christian religion, seen here from an ironic, problematic and parodying point of view – synthesising elements that arise from their approach. Maria do Mar Fazenda Selected bibliography Gilbert & George. Major Exhibition, Tate, London, 2007. Gilbert & George. Intimate Conversations with François Jonquet, Phaidon, London, 2004. Carter Ratcliff, Robert Rosenblum, Gilbert & George. The Singing Sculpture, Thames and Hudson, London, 1993. Gilbert & George. New Democratic Pictures, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, 1992. Gilbert & George. The Complete Pictures 1971-1985, Thames and Hudson, London, 1986. Devout, 2004 Mixed media · 189 x 300 cm · Unique print _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 144 22/12/08 19:13:58 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 145 22/12/08 19:21:10 146 BESART / NAN GOLDIN Nan Goldin Nan Goldin (1953, Washington, USA) marked an era. An entire lifestyle, of heroin chic, grunge style, and magazines like the Face and I-D, in other words, a whole generation was inspired by the photographs taken by Nan Goldin during the 1980s. Nan Goldin ‘forged a genre, where photography became more influential than ever before in the last twenty years’ stated The New York Times in 2003. And that genre was reproduced, copied and distributed like no other. To the point where it cannibalised its own creator, trivialising her images and dissolving her authorship. Hence the great importance of looking back at Goldin’s work. Nan Goldin started her career as an artist documenting her group of friends and their everyday life in an impulse that the artist herself says to have started with the trauma of her sister’s suicide and the subsequent anxiety in trying to preserve her memories. It was however when she moved to New York in 1978 that she discovered the motivation that would accompany her to this day. She would find her models at the Bowery, firstly documenting the post-punk and new age movements at the beginning of the 1980s, subsequently discovering the vibrant gay scene that would continue to fascinate her. That is where, quoting Bertold Brecht, she would produce her first emblematic exhibition: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986). Her photographs document a lifestyle in which the use of drugs and alcohol is abundant and where signs of physical violence are revealed, insinuating abu- sive relationships. But mostly, through the use of flash and high contrasts, the photographs create a penetrating aesthetic aura that emanates a sense of ro- manticism and transforms its protagonists into icons of transgression and indi- viduality. Someone once wrote that Nan Goldin’s photographs represent a private journey revealed to the public, when in fact what they really represent is the historic moment in which all that is private became public and there is no differ- ence between intimacy and exposure. Intimacy is exposure. Ana Pinto Selected bibliography Devil’s Playground, Phaidon, London, 2003. Nan Goldin. Recent Photographs, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 1999. Couples and Loneliness, Korinsha Press, Tokyo, 1998. Emotions and Relations, Taschen, Cologne, 1998. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, Aperture, New York, 1986. _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 146 22/12/08 19:21:10 146 BESART / NAN GOLDIN 147 BESART / NAN GOLDIN Nan Goldin Nan Goldin (1953, Washington, USA) marked an era. An entire lifestyle, of heroin chic, grunge style, and magazines like the Face and I-D, in other words, a whole generation was inspired by the photographs taken by Nan Goldin during the 1980s. Nan Goldin ‘forged a genre, where photography became more influential than ever before in the last twenty years’ stated The New York Times in 2003. And that genre was reproduced, copied and distributed like no other. To the point where it cannibalised its own creator, trivialising her images and dissolving her authorship. Hence the great importance of looking back at Goldin’s work. Nan Goldin started her career as an artist documenting her group of friends and their everyday life in an impulse that the artist herself says to have started with the trauma of her sister’s suicide and the subsequent anxiety in trying to preserve her memories. It was however when she moved to New York in 1978 that she discovered the motivation that would accompany her to this day. She would find her models at the Bowery, firstly documenting the post-punk and new age movements at the beginning of the 1980s, subsequently discovering the vibrant gay scene that would continue to fascinate her. That is where, quoting Bertold Brecht, she would produce her first emblematic exhibition: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1986). Her photographs document a lifestyle in which the use of drugs and alcohol is abundant and where signs of physical violence are revealed, insinuating abu- sive relationships. But mostly, through the use of flash and high contrasts, the photographs create a penetrating aesthetic aura that emanates a sense of ro- manticism and transforms its protagonists into icons of transgression and indi- viduality. Someone once wrote that Nan Goldin’s photographs represent a private journey revealed to the public, when in fact what they really represent is the historic moment in which all that is private became public and there is no differ- ence between intimacy and exposure. Intimacy is exposure. Ana Pinto Selected bibliography Devil’s Playground, Phaidon, London, 2003. Nan Goldin. Recent Photographs, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 1999. Couples and Loneliness, Korinsha Press, Tokyo, 1998. Emotions and Relations, Taschen, Cologne, 1998. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, Aperture, New York, 1986. Bruno smiling at Valérie out of the shadow, Paris, 2001 Silver Dye Bleach Print (Ilfochrome) · 101.5 x 70 cm · Edition 3/5 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 146 22/12/08 19:21:10 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 147 22/12/08 19:21:11 148 BESART / NAN GOLDIN Jimmy Paulette on David’s Bike, NYC, 1991 Silver Dye Bleach Print (Ilfochrome) · 44 x 64 cm · Edition 12/25 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 148 22/12/08 19:21:13 148 BESART / NAN GOLDIN 149 BESART / NAN GOLDIN Jimmy Paulette on David’s Bike, NYC, 1991 Silver Dye Bleach Print (Ilfochrome) · 44 x 64 cm · Edition 12/25 Mysty in Sheridan Square, NYC, 1991 Silver Dye Bleach Print (Ilfochrome) · 76.2 x 101.6 cm · Edition 19/25 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 148 22/12/08 19:21:13 _BES ART_UK NOR.indd 149 22/12/08 19:21:14 150 BESART / PIERRE GONNORD Pierre Gonnord Famous for his photographic portraits of different urban tribes captured either on the street or in his studio since 1998, Pierre Gonnord (1963, Cholet, France) is a self-taught artist who, since his teens, has been fascinated by the great masters of portraiture, both in photography and painting. This dedication to the genre has developed itself in series in which those portrayed are always connected or somehow related (be it because of their youth, lifestyle, the place where they live or social status), although they maintain their own individuality in the collective imaginary. Gonnord focuses mainly on the ex- pressivity of the subjects’ look and chooses to only show the upper body of those selected. He does so to explore the capacity that such framing – from the face to the shoulders – has of reflecting the personality of each subject and its inscrip- tion in a specific culture. Hence the attention given to the most subtle details in the physiognomy of the human body (beauty spots, scars, tattoos, little wounds, etc), taking an interest in all that it can imply simultaneously: difference and sameness, individuality and being part of a community or group A good example are the photographs taken in Madrid (where he has lived for over a decade), Paris or Tokyo and which are part of his different series, poign- antly titled Fashion (1998), Interiores (1999), Regards / Miradas (2000), City (2001) and Far East (the latter presented in 2003 during his second and significant solo exhibition held at the Galeria Juana de Aizpuru in Madrid).