Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Second Annual Robert Rosenblum Lecture
Gilbert & George in Conversation
with Michael Bracewell

Tuesday, April 3, 6:30 pm
guggenheim.org/publicprograms
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is pleased to present the Second Annual Robert Rosenblum Lecture on Tuesday, April 3, at 6:30 pm. In a choice emblematic of Rosenblum’s relationships with artists, it will feature the internationally acclaimed artists Gilbert & George in conversation with novelist and cultural historian Michael Bracewell, who has authored several publications on Gilbert & George.

Since first meeting at Saint Martins School of Art, London, in 1967, Gilbert & George have created a body of art that describes with unwavering lucidity the experience of being alive in the modern urban world. Violent, confrontational, and intensely atmospheric, the art of Gilbert & George reveals what the artists have described as “the moral dimension” of their subject matter: the desires, fears, hopes, volatility, and frailty of the human condition in all its messy and democratic momentum. For nearly five decades, Gilbert & George have created their works independently of any school or movement in modern and contemporary art, tirelessly refining the artistic capacities of what Rosenblum so succinctly defined as “the singularity of their duality.”

Gilbert & George’s worldwide exhibitions include the 2005 Venice Biennale, representing Great Britain; a 2007 retrospective at the Tate Modern, London, which traveled to the Haus der Kunst, Munich; the Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy; the Milwaukee Art Museum; and the Brooklyn Museum. In 2009, Gilbert & George created their largest series to date, titled Jack Freak Pictures. The series has been internationally touring, including at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany; Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Austria; Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland; and White Cube, London. Additional recent exhibitions include Gilbert & George: The Paintings at the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands; and Urethra Postcard Pictures at White Cube, London, and Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, Paris. Gilbert & George live and work in London.

The Annual Robert Rosenblum Lecture at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum honors the wide-ranging career of Robert Rosenblum (1927–2006), former Guggenheim Stephen and Nan Swid Curator, Twentieth-Century Art, and Henry Ittelson Jr. Professor of Modern European Art, New York University, whose celebrated work included projects on Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Francis Picabia, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol, and the depiction of dogs in art. The Inaugural Robert Rosenblum Lecture, “To Be with Art Is All We Ask,” on March 3, 2010, featured Jeffrey Deitch, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in conversation with Sir Norman Rosenthal paying tribute to their colleague Rosenblum as well as acknowledging Rosenblum’s deep friendship with Gilbert & George, whose quote titled the program. The First Annual Robert Rosenblum Lecture, “I Paint the Differences between Things: Matisse, Photography, and African Sculpture,” on April 22, 2011, was given by the art historian Ellen McBreen, an assistant professor of art history at Wheaton College. The Robert Rosenblum Lecture series is supported by donors to the Robert Rosenblum Fund, who are gratefully acknowledged for their generosity.

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