Unlike many of his other celebrity portraits, these paintings of Gilbert and George, the British artist-duo, are sober and restrained in their treatment. The colours are toned-down and pastel-like and applied uniformly over each canvas. The screenprinted images in black ink are un-smudged and clearly defined. They are based on polaroids taken by Warhol, for which Gilbert and George posed in a highly self-conscious manner. In order to stress the formality of the portrait poses of the two artists (who specialise in staged photographs of themselves), Warhol has included the paper edges of the polaroids as narrow strips on either side of the figures.