Collaboration at Rare and Rarefied Levels

Most things never change with Gilbert & George. Together, as ever, after 33 years, the British artists still speak in concert--as “we,” not “I”--dress in nearly identical suits, live on Fournier Street in London’s East End and make art that’s based on their bodies and their observations of urban life.

Their work has evolved considerably since the late 1960s, from posing in public as “living sculptures” to creating “The Rudimentary Pictures,” large photo-based wall pieces in their current exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. But the artists have always tried to cut through the art world’s hierarchies and esoteric language by speaking directly to a broad audience about everyday experience.

“We like to say we develop rather than change,” said George, the tall one, between sips of espresso at a coffee bar near the gallery. Gilbert nodded in agreement, over a cup of American-style brew.

Having a conversation with Gilbert & George is rather like talking to an eccentric English gentleman with two like-minded heads. The artists never disagree as they bat questions back and forth, but they do have individual quirks.

Gilbert Proesch, 56, was born in Italy and speaks with a slight accent in spirited outbursts. George Passmore, 58, is a relatively reserved British native who rephrases Gilbert’s thoughts and adds his own observations in clipped, tailored sentences. They met in 1967--as students at St. Martin’s School of Art in London--began working together and dropped their surnames.

“We always say it is something we didn’t arrange; it’s something that came over us,” George said of the partnership. “We were actually artists together before we said anything about it. Then everyone predicted it wouldn’t last.”

The union has not only endured, it has produced a huge body of work that has been exhibited in China, Japan and Russia, as well as in Britain, Europe and the United States. The latest installment, “The Rudimentary Pictures,” combines images of the artists--both clothed and nude--with street maps of their London neighborhood and magnified samples of blood, sweat, tears and urine.

“It’s about the beginning of life,” Gilbert said. “We realize that cities are made with sweat. We are sweating, we are crying. Our art is very emotional; it’s not art about art stuff. We are sorting out a way of living, explaining what we are doing here.”

“All of these elements are connected with the life of the city,” George said. “A city is not just geography, just architecture; it’s a very human place to be. A city is a very emotional place and we tried to explore that with these new pictures.”

The artists said they were amazed to see patterns emerge when they first viewed drops of bodily fluids through a microscope. Urine looks like a Chinese garden, blood resembles a road map, tears branch out like city streets. And superimposing the images on street maps suggests relationships between the fluids and the city, they said. “The background of sweat looks exactly like the streets,” Gilbert said of a piece called “City Sweat.” George pointed out cross shapes that correspond to crosses marking churches on the map.

Like their other work, “The Rudimentary Pictures” didn’t come from a preconceived idea. When it’s time to start a new body of work, “we don’t have to look too much,” Gilbert said. “We know what we are feeling, what we are talking about, what is going on in the world. We are feeling the world in a new way.”

They consistently deal with “all the issues which will never go away--sex, money, race and religion,” George said. The challenge “is to be completely blank, to be dead in the head when we go to make the next pictures. If not, we would be making pictures like before. We have to fall into something we haven’t actually figured out yet.”

Gilbert & George have often been ridiculed in the British press and they have been the subject of scathing reviews. But just as they have seen their once unfashionable neighborhood become the home to 20,000 artists and watched the revivification of London’s art scene, they have gained international recognition for their perpetually startling work.

A two-hour British television film on Gilbert & George has turned them into popular celebrities at home. In Paris, their 1997 retrospective at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville packed in a crowd of 90,000 instead of the expected 25,000. And major museums throughout the world have acquired examples of their work.

Inevitably, they also have been copied. In 1993, when they exhibited their work in Beijing and Shanghai, they were introduced to “the local G & Gs,” George said. But none of this seems to have turned the British duo’s heads.

“When we were baby artists, we always used to explain to journalists who accused us of being famous artists that there’s nothing less famous than artists,” George said. “In 1971, if people were asked to name a living killer or a living politician or a living singer, they could do it; when they were asked to name a living artist, no one could.”

That has changed, but much of their fame and London’s position as a hot spot for contemporary art can be attributed to the opposition, the artists said. “So many writers were writing against art that it became famous,” Gilbert said. “It was the enemy that created the success,” George added.

One result is that artists are in demand. Artists are resources of visual material for advertising and commercial products, and they are perceived to be more free than anyone else, Gilbert said.

“It’s rather good that suddenly people have realized that the artist is of some use,” George said. “For years they thought we were useless. We always remember when we were baby artists and we went to get a haircut, the barber would ask, ‘What do you do?’ When we said we were artists, he would [offer condolences] and say we would never make any money.”

But he and his partner take their popularity with several grains of salt, George said. “In Britain especially, journalists ask us, ‘How does it feel to be part of the establishment?’ We say, ‘We are very well established, but we are not establishment.’ That’s an important distinction. We are still in some way outsiders.”

That’s because “no one ever knows what we are going to do next,” Gilbert said. “And that’s because we don’t know either,” George added, as they both burst into laughter.

“We don’t believe we are different from anybody else,” Gilbert said, regaining his composure.

Then George chimed in with the final word: “We just go through life, but we make art out of it.”