2019 According to Gilbert & George

What colours will men wear in 2019?
“Flesh colours.”
Will men stop wearing sneakers?
“They should never have started. Except in bed.”
What else should change in men’s dressing?
“We would ban blue jeans and rucksacks.”
Will we be able to smoke wherever we want in 2019?
“Most unlikely. Smoking will be only permitted in prisons and mental institutions.”
Will people cook Molecular Cuisine at home?
“No idea. In the last forty years we haven’t even fried an egg. We go for lunch every single day at eleven to the same Kurdish restaurant. And we dine out every single night.”
What will be luxurious?
“Silence, service and sex.”
Will it be self-evident and manly if men give up their careers to take care of the household and everything that comes with it?
“Never before have there been so many househusbands. They should be in sole charge of the babies. That will teach them! Women should have nothing to do with it. Actually, men should also try to breast-feed the babies. Do you know that men have milk? We have the same nipples women do; we just have to press them. Most men are ashamed of it, so they don’t admit it, but we are half women.”
Which technological discovery will have a major impact on art?
“Art is always in advance of life.”
Which art form will vanish?
“Criticism. Nobody remembers the name of any critic, only the art piece itself. We’ll give you an example: They once interviewed a woman who lived next door to Vincent van Gogh; she said that Van Gogh was a horrible man. Who cares what she thinks? What did she paint?”
Will we make photographs with cameras?
“Of course, but there will be new images. Images that we have never thought of. Digital photography is definitely the future. We are moving towards that ourselves. It’s extraordinary, because you can take every image apart, down to one pixel. One can interfere in reality.”
Will these exhibitionist forms of showing oneself, like Facebook, Twitter, internet diaries and blogs, lose their power?
“No, why should they? We think it’s wonderful that everyone can be a celebrity now and express his or her thoughts. For once, people of the lower classes have the opportunity to raise their voice. Good luck to them. Why should it always be Louis XIV in some hideous pose who is heard?”
Will there still be celebrities?
“Oh yes, more and more. Anybody can become a celebrity. We need to feed the human being every day with something different. Something extremely different. There is never just a sunny day: it’s the sunniest day of the year. There are no taboos anymore, except for paedophilia. It’s extraordinary, but that’s the only taboo subject left.”
Will Madonna still be on tour wearing hot pants?
“You know, we know her. We met her once and thought she was very nice. We decided to go for dinner together. Someone from her staff called us and asked for the telephone number of the restaurant where we were supposed to go. We thought that was weird, but when we arrived at the restaurant we understood why. She had proclaimed Madonna’s rules to the staff. Nobody was allowed to talk to her personally; no one from another table was allowed to approach her and ask for an autograph. We had a really entertaining dinner until a middle-class woman came up to our table with a piece of paper and a pen. We could see Madonna freeze. Her expression became angry. The woman turned towards Gilbert and me and asked us for an autograph for her teenage daughter, who’s a fan of our work.”