THE RADICAL ARTISTS WHO VOTE TORY

Gilbert and George are a mass of contradictions. The pair – an art “brand” and a couple – create radical pieces, filled with swear words and bodily fluids, says Cole Moreton in The Mail on Sunday. Yet they dress conservatively in formal suits, and they’re devoutly Tory (they once met Theresa May, but she ran away when they tried to talk to her). It makes them an oddity in the art world, but liberal intolerance is one of their themes. As George puts it: “We want our art to bring out the bigot from inside the liberal and – conversely – to bring out the liberal from inside the bigot.” In fact, their outsider status has always been central to their relationship. They met at Saint Martin’s School of Art, where they felt alienated from their peers. They were all “trying to get a gallery and become professional artists,” says George, 76. “Some had mummy’s and daddy’s money. We were just country people.” (He is from Devon; Gilbert is from South Tyrol.) One day, they decided that to succeed, they needed to merge their lives and work as a single artist. They’ve been a unit ever since. They live and work together, in the East End; they walk the streets together, in search of inspiration; and they eat together every night, in the same Turkish restaurant. They rarely go out at all, let alone separately, and they don’t mix with other artists. “We don’t want to see other people’s art,” says Gilbert, 74. “We want to make art that is confronting life that is in front of us.”