Art
Façades
John McEwen
Tt says a lot for the energy and profes- isionalism of the artistic team of Gilbert and George, that within months of the shooting and screening of their most suc- cessful and ambitious film to date, The World of Gilbert and George, of a memorable retrospective at the White- chapel and a one-man show of new work last spring, they now come up with an exhibition at Anthony d'Offay of well over a hundred pictures made with commercial picture postcards (23 Dering Street till 13 February). The title of the show is Crusade, and the repetition of images to make a cruciform pattern, which proves to be the most characteristic of the several ar- rangements on view, does indeed suggest the blazonry of shields and flags. 'Through our hearts, brains and bodies the cards crystallise into our crosses of Monarchical, Christian, Nationalistic, Violent, Pagan, Floral, Sexual Post Card Pieces', explain the artists on the invitation card. 'They are our shields, our swords, our emblem, our vision, our tombstone and our life-masks.'
Last year was a bumper one for royal postcards because of the Wedding, and it is this crop that the show most conspicuously harvests. Everyone is there from the Duke of Edinburgh to, of course, Lady Diana. Sometimes the mood seems celebratory, sometimes quizzical, even ironical, sometimes brutish, sometimes funny. Alter- ing the message or effect of a single card is done, in the manner of film and the tradi- tion of collage, by repetition or juxtaposi- tion. Accordingly an image of fan-vaulting, repeated, can look like bursting fireworks; the face of a white pussy-cat, like a fringe of ermine or a buttoned quilt. Surrounding images of the Queen, in the first instance, the Queen Mother in the second, leave the spectator to make his own connections.
Emblems have always intrigued Gilbert and George, they even work emblematically as a team. In their art they parade the endless facades and masks of daily life, their own as much as the world's, sometimes hinting at what lies behind, sometimes revealing all. Monarchy and postcards form the ultimate in emblems, and intensify their scrutiny. They guard the emblem; they betray it. Invariably in this way they succeed in heightening the self- consciousness of the viewer. He becomes aware of his own masks as well as those he meets. If, on this occasion, this awareness encourages him to make postcard pictures for himself in the manner of his Victorian grandparents, Gilbert and George will have been proved successful yet again. Another mind will have been alerted, even saved, perhaps, from the numbing effects of telly and conformity. Carel Weight will be 74 this year. He has been an academician since 1965 and from 1957 to 1973 held the position of Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art. Now he is honoured by the Royal Academy with a retrospective exhibition in the diploma galleries at Burlington House (till 14 February; then touring to York City Art Gallery, 27 February to 4 April; Rochdale Art Gallery, 10 April to 9 May; Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, 26 May to 26 June; New Metropole Arts Centre, Folkestone, 3 July to 8 August). Weight has long been one of the most popular contributors to the Sum- mer Exhibition, with his portraits and, even more characteristically, pictures of odd go- ings on in Putney. As befits a professor his method is restrained, his subjects rarely self-revealing. He was taught, he says, in the Victorian way, to regard colour as an ornament; and his pictures still have an undertone of brownness to them. Nor is he a great one for uninhibited brushstrokes. The paint is mixed thin and applied with a draughtsman's care. This suits his artistic caution and taste for detail. For larger ef- fects he rubs and scrubs, nothing self- indulgent. At best he can catch that wan look of London rinsed and scoured by rain. His perspectives and organisation of inci- dent are impeccable. He could also be said to be Victorian in his respect for rules and need for a story. He admits to a jovial scep- ticism of highbrows, and the jollity breaks through in his painting too. His wraiths and muggers are toytown figures, the sentimen- tal stuff of melodrama. Two monumental canvases devoted to scenes of high drama — one of 'The Crucifixion', the other of a shipwreck — and some lively portraits represent him at his most engaged. There is a good, suitably tight, rendering of three people lost in thought in a narrow Putney garden. In the main, however, he has opted for drollery and the security of the ample but, alas, stifling bosom of the Academy. The facade has not been much disturbed.
'Good evening, I'm raping women in this area. I wonder if you would be interested.'
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