TY - JOUR
T1 - “A Door of Hell”
T2 - thresholds, crisis, and morality in the art of Gilbert and George in the 1970s
AU - Salter, Gregory
PY - 2018/8/7
Y1 - 2018/8/7
N2 - This essay considers the art of Gilbert and George in the 1970s in relation to the concept of the threshold. The threshold is used as a means of addressing the shifting, and potentially disintegrating, boundaries of space, politics, morality, and society that are represented, with reckless ambiguity, in Gilbert and George’s pictures. The Human Bondage series is read in the context of the artists’ adoption of right-wing imagery and rhetoric in their works and interviews, alongside the emerging and overlapping categories of skinheads, gay culture, and punk. The Dirty Words series is read in terms of its ambiguous spatial, racial, and political connotations. This analysis places Gilbert and George’s 1970s work more firmly in the context of a pervading sense of crisis in 1970s Britain. More broadly, it argues for reading artworks that embrace right-wing imagery with an attention to their workings, and a watchful sense of how they move between positions, spaces, and ideologies before our eyes. These pictures speak – urgently, perhaps, to us in 2018 – of fascism’s return, the banal slippage into its imagery and rhetoric, marking its presence at the heart of British history.
AB - This essay considers the art of Gilbert and George in the 1970s in relation to the concept of the threshold. The threshold is used as a means of addressing the shifting, and potentially disintegrating, boundaries of space, politics, morality, and society that are represented, with reckless ambiguity, in Gilbert and George’s pictures. The Human Bondage series is read in the context of the artists’ adoption of right-wing imagery and rhetoric in their works and interviews, alongside the emerging and overlapping categories of skinheads, gay culture, and punk. The Dirty Words series is read in terms of its ambiguous spatial, racial, and political connotations. This analysis places Gilbert and George’s 1970s work more firmly in the context of a pervading sense of crisis in 1970s Britain. More broadly, it argues for reading artworks that embrace right-wing imagery with an attention to their workings, and a watchful sense of how they move between positions, spaces, and ideologies before our eyes. These pictures speak – urgently, perhaps, to us in 2018 – of fascism’s return, the banal slippage into its imagery and rhetoric, marking its presence at the heart of British history.
U2 - 10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-09/gsalter
DO - 10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-09/gsalter
M3 - Article
SN - 2058-5462
VL - August 2018
JO - British Art Studies
JF - British Art Studies
IS - 9
M1 - gsalter
ER -