Germania

'Germania', 1980 deals with one of Gilbert & George's most recurring themes: from the 'Human Bondage' exhibition at the Konrad Fischer Galerie in Dsseldorf in 1974, to a series of works from 1980, these two artists confront the viewer in a direct way with the dangers of nationalism. According to Wolf Jahn, "Contrary to the normal meaning of the word, this is not a celebration of the power of one nation; it conveys no rigid ideology of national identity..." Gilbert & George take as their main theme a concept of value which has come under increasing attack in the course of recent history. National and patriotic consciousness has been classified as undesirable because it is thought to rest on a 'wrong' impulse: the impulse, that is, to foist national identity on the human individual; the megalomaniac insistence on a unity which can only be maintained by force, and which blocks the individual's aspiration to be free. The consequence of this view is the prevalence of a deep-seated hostility to anything that bears the name of nationalism. National consciousness itself tends to be regarded as a thinly veiled ideology whose aim is the enslavement of the individual or the restoration of the evils of the past. (In: W.Jahn, 'The Art of Gilbert & George, London, 1989, p.304.) In 'Germania', Gilbert & George have chosen to portray nationalism by depicting the faces of what appear to be two young Germans, the precise intentions of the artists are unclear; are they portraying two 'Hitler Youths' or young Neo-Nazis, or is it merely a portrait of two boys from the street? The three yellow flowers in the centre seem to cancel out any negative implications. Comparing 'Germania' to 'Cocky Patriot' porduced at the same time, we see that the artists have opted to replace the two young faces with the British flag, and the flowers with the 'cocky patriot'. It is then not "the image or the world that represents a menace, but the presumed deeper historical significance on which the customary awareness of the image is based." (ibid.)