Rewind: General Idea Editions 1967-1995
Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal
When Jorge Zontal (a.k.a. Slobodan Saia-Levy), AA Bronson (a.k.a. Michael Tims) and Felix Partz (a.k.a. Ron Gabe) came together in 1969, a corporate entity crystallized under the moniker General Idea. With style and fanfare they held their project up in the fading light of the end of the 20th century, sending rainbows off in all directions. Like the pots of gold found at the end of each rainbow, the works that make up this exhibition yield a wealth of insight into desire and the early days of queer culture.
Paul Gauguin stated it best when, in 1897, he titled a painting with three questions that cut to the core of the human condition: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? With this he put into words what would become the raison d'être of General Idea. Coming out of the late 1960s, GI navigated an increasingly consumer-mediated environment, addressing the fragility of identity while engaging in an interventionist strategy that decades later would be called "culture jamming." Employing a viral logo-logic approach, they infected a variety of popular mass media—magazines, fashion shows, wallpaper—increasing the accessibility of their work; however, that's not to say that the average punter was ready for what they were saying. Theirs was a democratic art, yet managed to sidestep the pseudo-Marxist practice that was endemic in much of the art of their time. GI shared their unique form of narcissism with a following that was almost a fan club, inviting all to take part in an extended public ritual.
The use of editions, many unlimited, increased their presence in a marginal community unable to pay the big dollars for art. Everybody could buy a copy of FILE or pick up an AIDS poster. Crests, buttons, pins, posters and photocopies were the vernacular of the street. The editions present a portrait of desire for fame, glamour, beauty, acceptance, shock and all things shiny. They were also about having fun and there's nothing wrong with that. But let's not forget the members of GI were constructs, names and personae created for public consumption. The real people behind the carefully considered images were rarely seen, leaving us wanting to know more, and that's the point.
Now that the light has faded and the rainbows have disappeared, we're left with a collection of artifacts that as individual pieces may seem to 21st-century eyes dated and obvious, but together still shine with an originality that younger artists continue to emulate. This exhibition draws together GI's most visible and influential works. Like the icons they poked fun at, the covers of FILE Megazine, the AIDS wallpaper posters and the stylized poodles are now a part of the contemporary art canon.
Samuel Beckett said, "To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world." GI failed with style.
by Randall Anderson
Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal
Comprising almost 300 objects in a modest university gallery, "General Idea Editions 1967-1995" is an overwhelming exhibition, and yet rewarding for the effort it demands.
General Idea is perhaps Canada's best-known art collective outside of the Group of Seven. The trio followed in the footsteps of Fluxus, Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol in producing art that commented upon the art world itself, and held up a twisted mirror to corporatized culture. Where GI differed from its forebears was in its humour and campy panache, perfectly illustrated by the swaggering image of a poodle rampant on a flag.
GI also had the notion of bringing artists and others together to participate in events and projects. Toronto's Art Metropole, founded by the group in 1974, is still a hive of contemporary art activity. For GI, art was something you responded to and participated in: you could "be your own host" at their Colour Bar Lounge, or a contestant in The Miss General Idea Pageant. In the show there are posters and artifacts from these events, and blueprints for the imaginary pavilion meant to house the beauty pageant.
GI's FILE Megazine began as a conduit for artists in different parts of Canada to get in touch with each other, then acquired the trappings of celebrity, alerting readers to the doings of various art-world "names." AA Bronson once wrote that they found it discouraging that most of the events being covered by FILE were started by the magazine itself.
There are also editions of GI multiples—precious, beautiful-looking objects of glass and metal, like things you would receive as gifts in monogrammed bags. They are given an added, uncomfortable dimension by the symbols they employ, such as test tubes for urine samples, or multicoloured pills formed into glass paperweights and mylar party balloons. These are the "cocktails" for a new, less fun-filled age.
A late group portrait from the early '90s shows the trio as baby seals: both media darlings and hunted victims. As if to emphasize the point, the seals were also presented in soap, a material soon used and gone. Perhaps the image looked forward to the deaths of Zontal and Partz from AIDS-related causes in 1994 and the consequent end of General Idea, but the soap figures themselves deliver more smiles than tears. This is a joyous show because of GI's wit and plenitude of ideas, and yet it is also a sad one because it is a memorial to something now over. With their objects now shut up behind glass, GI can seem caught inside the institutional spirit it hoped to bypass. Still, others, such as Vancouver's Adbusters, carry on the work of parodying corporate publicity, though with less humour than the trio who created a poster for Nazi Milk.
by Jack Ruttan
Winter 2003
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
