“They were still doing art about art and we never wanted that—we wanted to make art about life.”
—Gilbert & George
Boldly bright, Gilbert & George’s multi-panel mixed media work, Man-God, 1988, revels in the dichotomies and contradictions of the human condition. The work, segmented and numbered into 28 panels, presents a larger-than-life, bare-chested male figure against a vividly colored background of lush vegetation. The figure gazes vaguely upwards, and he leans, contraposto, against a pole—perhaps the handle of a gardening tool, or an architect’s meter stick. The pose and props of the figure confuse the resolution of the work’s title—is he Man, a human laborer, or God, divine gardener and architect of the universe?
For Gilbert & George, the physical construction of the work plays an integral role in its symbolic significance. The pair often use the grid as a way to visualize the step-by-step evolution of life, and an understanding that everything can be divided into segments— a month, a week, a day, an hour. The 28 segments of Man-God thus allude to the daily component parts of a monthly calendar, or even an average female cycle. Biblical parallels, such as the Book of Genesis, in which God creates the universe in one week, also spring to mind.
When gathering photographic material for their work, Gilbert & George seek out sculptural elements within the everyday, particularly references to classical sculpture. In Man-God, the work’s larger-than-life figure, sinking into a contraposto against a pole, mimics the unique and slightly awkward nature of Roman marble copies of Greek bronzes. Juxtaposing this nod to antiquity, Gilbert & George’s decidedly 1980s, neon-colored background avoids the notion of a “softly atmospheric” background, and throws the any preconceptions of an earthy paradise into artificial technicolor. Simultaneously harsh, flat, and frontal, the work almost seems to glow, like a stained glass window. Man-God is thus a representative example of Gilbert & George’s fearless and emotional oeuvre, combining art historical references with contemporary aesthetics, in a playful, yet sincere, commentary on human nature and the passage of time.
