How Gilbert and George make history

When Gilbert and George make war art, in their work Hecatomb, they seem to be mourning the dead of the first world war – or perhaps the Crimean – as much as any current conflict. When they comment on religion in their picture Christian England, a vastly enlarged crucifix becomes a reminder of centuries of past belief, a relic of the middle ages. Elsewhere in the Jack Freak Pictures, they imitate the rose windows of gothic cathedrals and the music-hall routines to which they paid homage with their early work, The Singing Sculpture.

One of the reasons I find the Jack Freak Pictures powerful is their archaism. In a world whose pounding speed these works frenetically mimic, history endures – as pain, ugliness, locality. The pictures incorporate a collection of old medals that are at once comic and melancholic. Old sporting medals and competition awards are mixed up with military insignia. The Britishness on display in this art is a working-class, East End Britishness – old wars, old clubs, old loyalties.

Or perhaps it is a deeper London past: the plague, the Great Fire. Perhaps the reason this art means so much to me now is that I've been a Londoner long enough to recognise its grainy sense of place. Gilbert and George have the hardness of a bronze war memorial. Images ought to stick in your throat a little. They should be rebarbative. They should repel, even.

History shapes these pictures not only as a subject but also as a style. They are history paintings made with a camera and computer. They not only have the scale of old battle paintings but the grandeur and dignity of such works. There's a lot of comedy in the Jack Freak Pictures. But this is serious art.