‘You learn how to be idiotic artists’: Gilbert & George on fame, rebellion and their mystery new collaborator
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, 82, and George Passmore, 84) are reworking their 1990 "Worlds and Windows" exhibition at the Gilbert & George Centre in east London, on display to 2027.
- Endless, a 41-year-old London street artist and the first to exhibit at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (2021), now visits the duo's Spitalfields home weekly after they noticed his 2015 street piece "Crotch Grab" and photographed it for a Singapore show.
- The new exhibition includes two posthumous works depicting George Crompton, a homeless man who sat in "the relaxing chair" in their studio and died in a hospice — the duo visited him before his death.
- The Gilbert & George Centre, a converted 19th-century brewery that opened in 2023, offers free admission in line with the duo's "Art for All" ethos; the artists plan to leave their remaining works to it, free to the public.
- Endless said he learns "how to be an artist from people who are greater than you," with George quipping the real lesson is "how to learn to be big-headed, idiotic artists," and Endless adding: "You can't take over what they've done. But you can carry the spirit forward."
Why it matters: The duo plan to leave their remaining works to their free-admission Gilbert & George Centre, making their body of work permanently public. Endless, a 41-year-old street artist visiting weekly, absorbs the ethos rather than inheriting formally, while the posthumous Crompton pieces immortalize a homeless studio regular.
Ask SkimNews
