Genteel Perversion

Genteel Perversion: The Films of Gilbert & George is the first book devoted exclusively to a critical analysis of Gilbert & George’s relationship to the moving image. Tracing their trajectory from eccentric London art students to major international artists, Chris Horrocks shows how over forty years their unique deployment of film and video adopted a precarious position between using film and being filmed, and embraced new technologies and networks to ensure their increasing exposure to an international audience. It reveals how their signature pieces, such as their notorious Bend It dance, melancholic Red Sculpture and seminal early short film Gordon’s Makes Us Drunk, reinvented and reinforced their identity on camera. From Gilbert & George’s gallery-based video art, their major film The World of Gilbert & George, and the many documentaries in which they perform as themselves for mass audiences, to their recent emergence and reception in the world of social network media and alternative spaces of display, Genteel Perversion exposes a volatile collision of living art and moving image.