General Idea
Does the subversive legacy of Felix Partz, AA Bronson and Jorge Zontal hold up today?
General Idea, “Self-portrait with Objects,” 1981-82
montage, gelatin silver print, 14” x 11” (National Gallery of Canada; photo courtesy NGC)
So, just how relevant – or passé – is General Idea today, 53 years after the subversive, groundbreaking, three-man art collective was founded?
You can search for an answer in the newly opened, definitive retrospective of the group’s work from 1969 to 1994 at the National Gallery of Canada. The 200 works in the Ottawa exhibition were assembled by Adam Welch, the gallery’s associate curator of Canadian art.
The work of the three men who adopted the names of Felix Partz, AA Bronson and Jorge Zontal was influential in permanently loosening the stays of Canadian art, especially in bringing queer art out of the closet. The group is mostly associated with the Toronto counterculture scene but artistic undergrounds in Winnipeg, Vancouver, Amsterdam and New York all played important roles in the group’s history. Andy Warhol was also a huge influence.
While walking through the first half of the exhibition showing the ephemera of General Idea’s early days, many visitors, especially younger ones, may lack the context to appreciate just how subversive the threesome was and just how uptight the Canadian art world was back then. It was so conservative that the three men in General Idea, despite layering their art with a mischievous gay sensibility, did not formally acknowledge their own queerness until the 1980s.
General Idea, “FILE Megazine, vol. 3, no. 1 (Glamour Issue)," Autumn 1975
offset periodical, 14” x 11” (Art Metropole fonds, Art Metropole Collection, National Gallery of Canada, photo courtesy the artist and General Idea Archives, Berlin)
The objets d’arts from those early days – grainy photos, videos, posters, mail art, tales of elaborate scams, copies of FILE Megazine parodying LIFE magazine – seem dated, quaint by today’s standards, more campy than consequential. The Miss General Idea beauty pageants, curious retail outlets both faux and real, and a relentless anti-establishment vibe were all meant to be fun, even shocking. But you had to be there, in the 1970s, to be astonished. General Idea’s early output seems diminished when exhibited half a century later in a formal art museum, appearing more as earnest archival flotsam and jetsam than rebellious works of art.
General Idea, “Evidence of Body Binding,” 1971
gelatin silver transparencies mounted in fluorescent lightboxes, 8” x 12” x 3.5” (National Gallery of Canada, photo courtesy NGC)
Initially, General Idea did not set out to create saleable art and was, therefore, surprised in 1974 when the National Gallery purchased Evidence of Body Binding, 1971, which consisted of 15 metal lightboxes, each mounted with a photographic transparency showing part of a body bound in elasticized thread. The effect is a perplexing mixture of science, pornography and horror. The sale helped General Idea realize it was doing something important.
General Idea, “Snobird: A Public Sculpture for The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion,” 1985
polyethylene bleach bottles and monofilament, installation view at National Gallery of Canada (Carmen Lamanna Gallery collection, Toronto; photo courtesy NGC)
Most of General Idea’s output is not drenched in Canadiana but resonates with Western culture generally. An exception is Snobird: A Public Sculpture for The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion, 1985. Snobird consists of dozens of white birds created from plastic bleach bottles that hang from a ceiling. The work cheekily references Anne Murray’s breakout hit Snowbird and Michael Snow’s 1979 installation Flight Stop, which depicts 60 geese in flight at Toronto’s Eaton Centre.
The substance and tone of General Idea’s work changed in the 1980s, when the trio moved to New York and became gay crusaders. Consider the paintings of cartoon-like fornicating poodles, the frisky dogs serving as stand-ins for the three artists. Poodles were considered the ultimate bourgeois pets of the day. Pictures of them re-enacting scenes from a homosexual Kama Sutra were meant to jolt the establishment and amuse everyone else. The paintings told the world: We’re here and we’re queer, get used to us.
During this time, General Idea really made its mark taking on the AIDS crisis through paintings, sculptures and installations. These works comprise the latter half of the exhibition. These are works for the ages.
General Idea, “AIDS,” 1987
acrylic on canvas, 72” x 72” (private collection, courtesy Blondeau & Cie, Geneva; photo courtesy Blondeau & Cie)
And so we get the colourful painting AIDS, which appropriated the font of the 1964 iconic painting LOVE by pop artist Robert Indiana. In Indiana’s painting, the first two letters of the word “love” sit atop the latter two letters of the word. AIDS replicated that arrangement.
The resulting work was an in-your-face shout-out acknowledging the presence of AIDS at a time when Ronald Reagan, then the American president, refused to utter the word, despite the deaths of thousands of Americans each year. General Idea replicated the AIDS painting in various media, from sculptures to posters and wallpaper. In New York City, the word AIDS in big bold letters suddenly was everywhere. General Idea’s art helped America come to terms with the deadly health crisis. This is political art at its best.
Another two of General Idea’s most famous works are One Year of AZT and One Day of AZT. Made in 1991, both installations include replicas of pills used in that period to lessen the effects of AIDS. The One Year installation contains 1,825 replicas of the pills and the One Day installation contains five giant copies. The two installations are united in one room at the gallery.
Another room is filled with the installation Fin de Siècle, 1990, in which three cuddly baby harp seals (stand-ins for the General Idea threesome) are dwarfed by some 300 giant polystyrene ice floes. The installation critiques anyone who rushes to save baby seals from hunters while ignoring the plight of people dying of AIDS. Long after AIDS is no longer considered a threat, the installation will serve as a reprimand to those who ignore any disadvantaged group of humans in favour of other creatures.
Two members of General Idea – Partz and Zontal – contracted AIDS. Both died in 1994. The surviving member, Bronson, photographed Partz, surrounded by layers of bright fabric, moments after his death. His face is shockingly skeletal, his eyes open and staring. The billboard-sized photograph, titled Felix, is the tombstone of General Idea and is being shown at the National Gallery beside, not inside, the General Idea exhibition because the photograph is the work of Bronson, not the collective. Yet, it is hard to ignore the fact that Felix, in summing up the AIDS crisis so horrifically and so personally, may be the show’s most profound and enduring statement. ■
General Idea at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa from June 3 to Nov. 20, 2022.
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