Shock art icons Gilbert & George on 40 years of double trouble

TWO OF A KIND Gilbert (right) & George (left) in their standard work clothes

If Andy Warhol was the prince of pop art, then Gilbert & George are its court jesters. Collaborators and co-conspirators since they met at St. Martins College in London 40 years ago, this dandified British duo helped invent performance art before switching to photo-driven montages that mix the iconography of religion, sex, and advertising.

"We never did any proper commissions. People could plop one of the pictures on a toaster for all we care, but we don't want to do it ourselves"Their recent show at the Tate Modern drew one of the museum's largest crowds, and the pair will take the show on the road with U.S. stops during the next year in San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Brooklyn. Now busting bookshelves is the mammoth two-volume set Gilbert & George: The Complete Pictures, 1971-2005 (Aperture, $89.95), which charts their progress via 1,500 images.

Gilbert & George's influence is felt all over print and Web design, fashion, and even window display. "They were really funny and stupid in a great way. Similar to Warhol in that they were sphynx-like," says Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys New York. "They were also style avatars: Gilbert & George were doing that tweedy Duke of Windsor retro look eons before Ralph Lauren brought it back."

RADAR: I can't think of another artist duo that has worked together for so long and so successfully. Forty years! How do you negotiate two egos into one piece?
George: Two people, one artist. One asleep, one awake.

Have you ever come to fisticuffs over a work?
Gilbert: No, we would never do that. We've developed a system. We get our new ideas and chuck them on the floor, see what sticks.

You've said your work boils down to sex, money, race, and religion. Is it really as simple as that?
Gilbert: Is there anything else? I guess it's even simpler now, down to love and hate. Everything is just love and hate.
George: It was interesting at the opening at the Tate. We were swarmed by hundreds of people from around the world who just wanted to shake our hand. Then we read the Sunday Times and the critics were full of hate. Nasty!

Your '80s oeuvre had terrible critical reaction at first—one naysayer said it was all "shit and queers." Why was there such a backlash?
George: Tourists walk through a museum and admire the Greek kouros, or marble nudes, and African tribal sculpture with big dicks, and Renaissance or even Cubist nudes, all fine. They'd get to our nudes and go, "Aaargh!"