Through an account of the artist duo’s exhibitions in late Cold War USSR and China, Gilbert & George and the Communists is also a portrait of a long gone artworld
Birch’s 2022 Bacon in Moscow told the story of the author’s pivotal role in organising an unprecedented retrospective of Francis Bacon’s paintings in the Soviet Union in 1988. Gilbert & George and the Communists is its sequel; by 1989, Birch, still a struggling young London gallerist, finds that his success brokering the Bacon exhibition prompts the odd couple of British contemporary artists to take him on to do the same for them. From the booze-soaked hedonism of 80s Soho to the booze-soaked stoicism of the last days of Soviet Russia, and then on to post-Tiananmen Square Communist China, it is a vivid, entertaining memoir of clashing cultures; from London’s gay and subcultural scene, through the catty and manipulative upper echelons of the British art establishment, to the corrupt, disintegrating Russian diplomatic bureaucracy and the somewhat more efficient, if faceless, Chinese machine, Birch manages to steer the artists through to shows in Moscow, Beijing and Shanghai.
Why would Western artists be so interested in showing in the heart of communism? There was of course Gilbert & George’s obsession with making an art ‘for the people’ (they bridle, ironically, at ‘Marxist’ British art critics, all the while provoking the ‘lefty’ art establishment with their performative conservatism and idolising of Margaret Thatcher), an interest that aligned with the West’s enthusiasm for Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost. There was the love of money, of course, Birch recounting stories of art dealers looking for opportunities to get to the previously closed store of historical Russian art and artists; and there was the reputational arms race of Western art dealers seeking the prestige of having their artists shown on an international stage.
But Gilbert & George… is really Birch’s love letter not just to the artists, their humour, charisma and fearless unconventionality, but also to an artworld culture built on friendships, entrepreneurialism and hedonism. The real villains of the book are the power-trippers and bureaucrats – the artists’ mirthless, manipulative London dealer Anthony d’Offay, and the condescending, meddlesome upper-class hierarchy of the British Council, offended that Birch is bypassing them. It’s a portrait of an artworld long gone, one perhaps a lot more fun (and hungover) than the one that came to replace it.
Gilbert & George and the Communists by James Birch. Cheerio, £19.99 (hardcover)
From the January & February 2025 issue of ArtReview – get your copy.
