--- Jan Svenungsson wrote:
He has this theory that R&F may have gotten their original inspiration for the suits and the robotic behaviour - the visual concept - when they saw British art duo Gilbert & George do their legendary "singing sculpture" piece at the Duesseldorf Kunsthalle in 1970.
While I don't have any specific info regarding whether or not Ralf & Florian were in attendance at the G&G show in 1970, I'll point out that your friend's theory is certainly nothing new, and their correlation to Gilbert & George has certainly been postulated on in the past. In Pascal Bussy's book "Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music", the author writes of the 1973 'Ralf & Florian' album: "Adopting their respective first names may well have been influenced by the performance art duo Gilbert and George, who from the late sixties onward worked exclusively as a single artistic unit under their first names... Schneider's adoption of a formal, almost old-fashioned suit, could again have been inspired by Gilbert and George who chose to juxtapose the newness of their art against an old fashioned image by dressing exclusively in rather stuffy tweed double-breasted suits." Similarly, Tim Barr's book "Kraftwerk: From Düsseldorf to the Future (with Love)" quotes the following: "In 1970, the British performance art duo Gilbert & George had appeared in Düsseldorf. Though their work included paintings and installations which referenced many of the developments in pop art, Situationism and post-modernism, Gilbert & George's most famous artwork was themselves. On the surface, their appearance was that of two very straight, square, quintessentially English, civil servants. This image was in direct contrast to the radicalism of their artistic strategies. They would play up their normality while, at the same time, creating art that was extremely unconventional and contentious. Their appearance in Düsseldorf had been introduced as The Singing Sculpture and consisted of two eight-hour performances of the song 'Underneath The Arches' made famous by the British music-hall duo Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen. Both Hütter and Schneider must have been intrigued by Gilbert & George's semi-ironic but unmistakably English art and, perhaps in view of their own cultural concerns, were inspired to use the essence of it to create something that was equally identifiably German. The front cover of 'Ralf & Florian' album featured a photograph that bore obvious traces of Gilbert & George's influence. It's interesting to speculate whether or not Kraftwerk and their friends on the Düsseldorf art scene appreciated the full resonance of Gilbert & George's performance in their hometown, however." Retropolis __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos http://launch.yahoo.com/u2