Gilbert And George (And Me)

If in doubt - and I have been having a lot of doubts about things this week - go and twaddle around an art gallery, which is what I did with my sister last night. We went to see the massive Gilbert And George show at Tate Modern, which was...well either you like GnG or not.

I remember them in the 1970s with their graffiti and their swear words and their overt sexuality. It all seemed to fit into the whole 1970s punky/fuck you ethos. And when I moved to London at about the same time, they still had their names and telephone numbers in the phone book, so you could drink lots of cider and then call them and giggle at their clipped voices on the other end of the phone. (In retrospect, a little later in life, I felt guilty about these prank calls. But then I read that they were drinking mammoth amounts of gin at the time, so I like to assume my calls were all just part of a gin haze they were in.)

Later on, in the late 1980s, when I was hanging around the East End a lot with my new post university London friends, you would often see GnG walking around together in their tweed suits. It was kind of exciting seeing real artists being normal, and not hiding in their studios like Bacon and Freud. They (GnG) were part of the East End scenery, and seemed quite happy to be stared at by my me and my mates.

In the 1990s, they became these massive massive art stars, and it also turned out that they had been buying up real estate throughout east London, carefully planning and saving and investing the - presumably equally massive - money they were getting for huge pictures of their bodily fluids and waste. Again, it seemed rather appropriate to the time. While bankers and advertisers were making millions out of nothing, GnG were selling pictures of shit to them. Someone gave me a GnG puzzle for my birthday in 1995. I still keep meaning to get it framed or made into a coffee table or something.

The show at Tate Modern is huge. I'm not sure how good lots of their pictures look together in one room, but - for me anyway - it was a real retrospective: of moving to London; of coming back to London after university; seeing the us and them in the wealth around this city in the 1990s; and with a nice recent GnG moment when I bought mrs househusbandnot a signed GnG poster for Valentine's Day this year. Is introspection the same as retrospection? Having said the other day that I dwell on the past too much, I am conscious that me wandering around reminiscing about my life in London should be watched carefully. But I loved it...

...although the GnG experience was somewhat mugged by my sister suggesting we go on the Carsten Holler slides all the way from the fifth floor of the gallery down to the ground. Brutal or what?

Brian Sewell is on holiday.