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Internationally celebrated artist collaborative General Idea (active 1969-1994) generated an enormous body of work in media ranging from video, performance and publishing to painting, sculpture and installation. Over their 25 years together, they held 123 solo exhibitions and were included in 149 group exhibitions internationally, including the Paris, Sydney, Sao Paulo and Venice Biennales and Documenta.
Early on, the three principals assumed "noms de plume" to reflect new identities as collaborators. Michael Tims (b at Vancouver 18 June 1946) became AA Bronson; Ron Gabe (b at Winnipeg 23 April 1945; d at Toronto 5 June 1994) became Felix Partz; and Slobodan Saia-Levy (b at Parma, Italy 28 January 1944; d at Toronto 3 February 1994) became Jorge Zontal. Their strengths were diverse. In the mid-1960s Bronson and Partz studied at the University of Manitoba, Bronson in architecture, writing and editing and Partz in fine arts. Zontal, who grew up in Venezuela, studied architecture, theatre and film at Dalhousie University, Halifax. They each separately gravitated to the countercultural underground in Toronto in the late 1960s. By 1969 they found themselves living and working together. General Idea focused its creative energies from the outset on understanding pop culture, and was interested in how the artist, the creative process, the museum, the media and the audience interact to form culture. To explore these phenomena, General Idea created a labyrinthine fictional narrative: "Miss General Idea" and "The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion." From 1970 to 1978, General Idea created performances and installations centred on the construct of the beauty pageant as a simulacrum and critique of the art world. As the moment for the ultimate 1984 Pageant approached, General Idea destroyed their fictional pavilion and became "archaeologists" (1979-1987), searching the ruins for "artifacts." Their work now focused on the object, and performance vanished. By 1987 General Idea shifted its focus to the AIDS epidemic. Appropriating Robert Indiana's iconic "LOVE" painting of 1967, General Idea created the "AIDS" logo, and began a publicity campaign for the previously unmentionable disease: over the next 7 years (1987-1994) they carried out over 50 temporary public art installations internationally. Related work followed, including the installation "One Year of AZT" and "One Day of AZT," and their seminal "Fin de Siècle," an installation of three baby seal pups stranded on a vast Styrofoam ice floe. General Idea published 26 issues of FILE Megazine (1972-1989). In 1974 they founded Toronto's Art Metropole as a publishing and distribution centre for artists. AA Bronson now works as a solo artist and continues to exhibit internationally. In 2002 he received a Governor General's Visual and Media Arts Award.
Author
FERN BAYER
Suggested Reading
General Idea 1968-1984 (1985); General Idea's Fin de Siècle (1992); Stephan Trescher, Die Kanadische Künstlergruppe General Idea (1994); The Search for the Spirit: General Idea 1968-75 (1997); AA Bronson, Negative Thoughts (2000).
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