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From: blp Category: Art Date: 29 January 2007 Time: 08:30 AM Review: I met G and G once and they were worried about being sidelined then too. Gilbert said that their art was 'the most democratic' because everyone could understand it. George said, 'It's so terribly difficult to get photography taken seriously as art.' Gilbert scoffingly said that no one takes painting seriously anymore. And now....they won't see the Velázquez or similar because they're too working class. They think the art world, presumably the same one that acknowledges Francis Bacon as greatest British painter of the twentieth century, is homophobic. They're annoyed that the Tate wouldn't give them a retrospective when they asked for it. At what level of marginalisation do you have to be at to think it's OK to ask a major public gallery for a retrospective? It must be a delicate balance. I don't think any of this fatuousness is supposed to be a joke, is it? When did these two lose their sense of humour? Read Lucy Lippard's '6 Years, the Dematerialisation of the Art Object' and their bits are easily the best and always a nice rest from passages about people stretching scotch tape across doorways and cataloguing their belly button lint. The early work is clever, odd and funny. The World of Gilbert and George is a genius film and the rest - Drinking Sculpture, the videos - all totally brilliant. What they do now is ugly, overblown and empty and I don't like being manipulated by the feeling that we're all supposed to treasure them. The Tate should have agreed to Gilbert and George, The Early Interesting Work and left the giant coloured gewgaws to the bloated international art market.