In these days when gay marriage — and divorce — exists, where sexual diversity includes a multitude of genders and even identity fluidities — which makes it almost conservative to be “just” gay or bi — some, especially younger, may find it difficult to realize how the Canadian collective General Idea (1969-1994) embodied a sexual, aesthetic and even political revolution.
In the 1960s and 1970s, there was then a real position of activist, fighter, revolutionary to show a queer or simply homosexual identity. This was not only true in society, it was also true in the art world, which nevertheless claimed to be progressive. One of the members of the trio – the only survivor – AA Bronson, moreover confided to the art historian Beatrix Ruf that at that time, “displaying ourselves as queer artists would have signed our death warrant. We could never have gotten another exposure. At the same time, we had fun with the models of representation stemming from homosexuality”.
This collective of artists — which, at first, was not a trio, but a group of “cis, trans, gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer and straight” people —, born in 1969, was able to play with the codes of representation present in our societies from the very beginning thanks to a caustic humour. Felix Partz (1945–1994), Jorge Zontal (1944–1994) and AA Bronson (born in 1946) — real names Ronald Gabe, Slobodan Saia-Levi and Michael Tims —, inspired by the work of Andy Warhol, are appropriated by queer culture, which itself hijacked the codes of the dominant heteronormative culture.
In our time where appropriation is everywhere, both triumphant and at the same time decried by companies who want to make as much money as possible by appropriating authors’ rights and by a militant left in search of social justice, this is a way of doing things that will not fail to make you think.
Thanks to its work of ironic quotations and diversions, General Idea (GI) infiltrated the arts milieu in the country, but also throughout the West. As the art theorist René Payant wrote in the 1980s, who died of AIDS like two of the members of GI, art is a virus… It must be said that the members of the trio had met in Toronto at the theater Wall pass. What a wonderful auspice. But it must be said that with the look and attitude of GI, everything seems to take on a second or third meaning.
Appropriation as art
We should talk about their work The 1970 Miss General Idea Pageant [Le concours de beauté Miss General Idea 1970], a biting way to divert these ridiculous beauty contests that abound on the planet. We could also mention the production of their magazine entitled FILE Megazine (1972–1989), which in the late 1970s earned them a continuation of the journal Life who described their journal as a “parasitic art project”. We must not forget how, in 1987, in the midst of the AIDS crisis, it seemed obvious to GI that it was necessary to create a work where the word LOVE of Robert Indiana’s famous work of 1966 would be replaced by the letters forming AIDS. We could also discuss the works of Mondrian diverted, “contaminated” in 1994 by green, a color reviled by the master. And we could also refer to the parody showing General Idea in the form of seals, animals which, in the 1980s, greatly affected the public thanks to the awareness work of Brigitte Bardot, when few seemed upset by the AIDS pandemic which raged…
“Form follows fiction”
As can be read in the title of one of their works, GI also parodied the slogan ” Form follows function invented by Louis H. Sullivan and used by many architects. This trio demonstrated how any representation of the world is invention, but also an attempt to naturalize values that are not transhistorical. Evidence of Body Binding [Image de corps ficelé] from 1971, the first work by General Idea acquired by the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, in 1973, shows among other things how the body is controlled, bound by social values. More than in the line of pop art, the work of GI can be resituated in the heritage of the dadaists and not only, as one might think, because of the use of corrosive humor. As early as the First World War, Dada launched a magazine, parodied advertising, including that of a soap and a hair lotion named Dada, as well as the advertising language that made Dada a brand…
This is therefore a major creation which, even today, is of total relevance. A work that underlines the importance of the artist’s freedom and the right to creative appropriation.
Our journalist was the guest of the NGC.
An exceptional catalog