Gilbert and George as Iconoclastic As Ever

Gilbert and George met with the Guardian's Arts Pages on Monday. The couple, who have previously been championed by the gay press over many years, have lived together since 1967 and have enshrined their love in provocative art which has given them the title of the pioneers of performative art in the UK. In their latest interview, they speak of their relationship with local addicts and homeless people, to whom they have shown kindness from their East London home. They have also launched a series of photographs depicting London in the sad time of Covid19 and they discuss issues such as illegal rave parties, which they find exhilerating, to the horrors of the health crisis, echoing their feelings of the AIDS pandemic of the nineteen eighties. The couple are paradoxically radical in their art, but have conservative inclinations in their politics, expressing doubt about the Black Lives Matter movement's judgements on old monuments and statues. “We Don't go to Rome and topple the heads of Ceasar, even though he did terrible, terrible things”, they conclude.