In 1969, artists AA Bronson, Jorge Zontal and Felix Partz formed General Idea and began a 25-year-long creative journey together. Working in painting, performance, installation, sculpture, photography and video, the innovative artist group created works that boldly interrogated the art world and popular culture at large. During the historical AIDS crisis of the 1980s and early 90s, General Idea produced several now-iconic works which increased public awareness of the epidemic.  

On Wednesday September 3, founding member AA Bronson will join Adam Welch, Curator, Modern Art to reflect on his six-decade-long practice, both as part of General Idea (1969–1994), and following, often working in a spirit of collaboration and queer kinship. 

On view now at the AGO as part of the exhibition Light Years: The Phil Lind Gift is General Idea’s photo collage Three Men #1 - #4 (1977). While sorting through copies of Fortune Magazine from the 1950s, Bronson, Zontal and Partz noticed businessmen, architects and builders were often depicted in groups of three. They decided to lift four of these images and juxtapose them with highly staged self-portraits, underscoring the corporate method of their artmaking. Their very name alludes to companies such as General Electric or General Motors, and came about partly by accident. In 1970 the group submitted a work for an exhibition at Toronto’s Nightingale Gallery, and the organizers mistook the title of the work, General Idea, for the artists who made it. This mistake suited them well, and during their long collaboration, they often frustrated the myth of the singular artist genius–much preferring to work together than apart.

Installation view, General Idea. Three Men Working #1 - #4 . Gelatin silver prints, Overall (each): 78.7 × 104.1 cm. Estate of Philip B Lind. © General Idea.

General Idea shares a long history with the AGO, beginning in 1971 when they mounted The 1971 Miss General Idea Pageant in Walker Court. The performance, a kind of mock beauty pageant, was equal parts televisual spectacle and a send-up of the art world. Since then, many works by the group have entered the museum’s collection. In 2011, the AGO hosted Haute Culture: General Idea, a major retrospective of the group’s work. Originally on view at Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, the exhibition was organized around five central themes in General Idea’s practice: “the artist, glamour and the creative process”; “mass culture”; “architects/archaeologists”; “sex and reality”; and “AIDS.” In addition to the over 300 works on view, the AGO installed General Idea’s iconic AIDS sculpture at Dundas and Beverley streets during the run of the exhibition. 

In 2022 Bronson and Welch organized the most comprehensive retrospective to date of General Idea’s work, which opened at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, before travelling to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Gropius Bau, Berlin. 

Bronson will be live in conversation on Wednesday September 3 at 7pm in the AGO’s Baillie Court. Book your tickets here.