.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Mirroring their debaucherous lifestyle in the 1970s, Gilbert & George's Pink Elephants belongs to an early series of photographic works with alcohol and intoxication as the central theme. A celebratory and experimental time for the artists, 1972 marks their first brushes with commercial success and global recognition. Gilbert & George's photo-pieces from this period utilise the distortive qualities available in the photographic medium to suggest the effects of drinking and intoxication experienced by the artists in their everyday life. In Pink Elephants ten uniquely cropped and processed photographs of Gilbert & George at Balls Brothers Bar on Bethnal Green Road in London are overlaid with photographic negatives or shadows of cocktail glasses tumbling across the foreground. The title of the present work refers to 'seeing pink elephants', a euphemism for drunken hallucinations. Indeed the cascading glasses lend a sort of swaying sensation to the photographs, distorting our vision and ability to discern between hallucination and reality.
An important precursor to Gilbert & George's celebrated 'Dead Boards' series, Pink Elephants makes playful use of photographic techniques and styles, both recalling photo-documentary as well as Surrealist processes of photo-collage. While the original negatives were in focus and had no optical illusions, the artists printed the photographs themselves, deliberately introducing strange effects and distortions during the darkroom process that allowed the photo-documentary aspects of the image to give way to a sense of the uncanny. The topsy-turvey overlaying of the cocktail glasses negates any implication of a Minimalist geometric regularity from the stark black frames. Indeed this was a very experimental period for Gilbert & George, who were keen to move beyond the limitations they were encountering in public performance. By utilising the photographic medium's ability to erase the artist's hand, a quality which they felt their audience had become preoccupied with in the past, Gilbert & George were able to acutely embody their 'art-life' and create a sort of pseudo-document of their experience as 'living sculptures'.
An important precursor to Gilbert & George's celebrated 'Dead Boards' series, Pink Elephants makes playful use of photographic techniques and styles, both recalling photo-documentary as well as Surrealist processes of photo-collage. While the original negatives were in focus and had no optical illusions, the artists printed the photographs themselves, deliberately introducing strange effects and distortions during the darkroom process that allowed the photo-documentary aspects of the image to give way to a sense of the uncanny. The topsy-turvey overlaying of the cocktail glasses negates any implication of a Minimalist geometric regularity from the stark black frames. Indeed this was a very experimental period for Gilbert & George, who were keen to move beyond the limitations they were encountering in public performance. By utilising the photographic medium's ability to erase the artist's hand, a quality which they felt their audience had become preoccupied with in the past, Gilbert & George were able to acutely embody their 'art-life' and create a sort of pseudo-document of their experience as 'living sculptures'.