NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 are releasing the second album on MoMA/MoMA PS1 Records, The Thoughts of Gilbert & George, in a limited, signed and numbered edition of 2,000 copies. This vinyl record, a new artwork by the artists Gilbert & George, revisits one of their signature works, The Singing Sculpture. Issued in conjunction with the recent exhibition of their work at MoMA, Gilbert & George: The Early Years (May 9–September 27, 2015), The Thoughts of Gilbert & George follows the debut release by MoMA/MoMA PS1 Records in September 2014, There Will Never Be Silence, an album that paid homage to John Cage. The Thoughts of Gilbert & George was organized by David Platzker, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, MoMA, and Jenny Schlenzka, Associate Curator, MoMA PS1.

According to Gilbert & George, the inspiration for their first mature work, The Singing Sculpture, was a recording of the Depression-era song “Underneath the Arches” they found in 1968 in a secondhand store in London. Since its inception, The Singing Sculpture has been described by critics and art historians as a performance. Gilbert & George, however, have always referred to it as a Living Sculpture, a work of art lasting the duration of gallery hours, not the three-minute length of the recorded song. In a genuine sense The Singing Sculpture shares motifs and feelings one might gather from a lifelike bronze monument on a pedestal in a museum or city square. Yet it equally conveys the innate similarities of the protagonists of the song, city wanderers, sleeping rough on cobblestones beneath train-track archways, portraying a resilient attitude of keeping one’s chin up. It is a manifesto within an upbeat musical tempo, much like the outward personality of Gilbert & George themselves.

Gilbert & George—two people yet one artist—have created thousands of pictures since meeting in London in 1967 as students at Saint Martin’s School of Art. From Living Sculptures, Charcoal on Paper Sculptures, Drinking Sculptures, and Video Sculptures to Pictures, they have summed up their position as artists succinctly: “Art and life have become one, and we were the messengers of a new vision.”

The Thoughts of Gilbert & George reflects the totality of that “new vision.” On this album the sculptors revisit The Singing Sculpture, reminiscing with it, sharing memories, and bringing their liaison up to date on their most recent art, thoughts, and endeavors. In an age of soundbites and tweets, Gilbert & George conceived The Thoughts of Gilbert & George to be savored, as one would take in a picture or a radio-personality show in the predigital era. Not simply a visit with their past, the work welcomes listeners into the artists' archives and studio to spend time with them and their art, deeply engaging with them from the eastern edge of London—and extending throughout the globe.

The record is available exclusively at MoMA stores and online at store.moma.org now through September, when it will go into wider release. The record is a signed and numbered edition of 2,000 copies and retails at $50.00.