{"title":"General Idea","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"rare-gift-of-the-tropics-book-general-idea-9783907179611","title":"A Rare Gift of the Tropics","description":"Living and working together as part of the late 1960s Toronto counterculture, AA Bronson (b.  Michael Tims, 1946, Vancouver), Felix Partz (b.  Ronald Gabe, 1945, Winnipeg, d.  1994), and Jorge Zontal (b. Slobodan Saia-Levy, 1944, Parma, d.  1994) formalized their collaboration in 1969 as a single entity known as General Idea.  From their earliest projects like staging of The 1970 Miss General Idea Pageant to their late activist initiatives around the AIDS crisis, General Idea explored multimedia, conceptual, and performance work as a tool for engaging with common culture and its repressions.  A definitive retrospective of General Idea is currently travelling from the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Gropius Bau in Berlin.  An extensive exhibition of these drawings has been shown at the Drawing Center in New York and MAMCO in Geneva.   Less well-known are the group’s drawings, the vast majority of which have never been seen.  The drawings shown in A Rare Gift of the Tropics were all produced by Jorge Zontal, who made them as a habitual practice during the group’s brainstorming meetings; however, given General Idea’s mandate for co-authorship (and as demonstrated by the “GI” signature affixed by Zontal shortly before his death) as well as the circumstances under which they were executed, they are considered to be collaborative.  The drawings assumed a greater regularity after 1985, the year the group left Toronto, which felt increasingly isolated from the global art world, for New York. As the 1980s wore on, their early joie de vivre was tempered by the pervasive presence of AIDS.  In Bronson’s words, it was a period “during which we had to face and somehow incorporate the illness and death of most of our friends, as well as Jorge and Felix themselves. ”   Although drawn by hand, the repetition of specific motifs follows a logic that is akin to General Idea’s own penchant for mass reproduction and that echo the virality of their AIDS works.  In their mutability and insistent flow, the drawings are a fascinating window into General Idea’s distinct artistic vision and unique notions of authorship, exposing representation’s inadequacy while acknowledging its urgency.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49753196790033,"sku":"NGR9783907179611","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/3907179617.jpg?v=1750731177"},{"product_id":"general-idea-book-general-idea-9783037645857","title":"General Idea","description":"Published on the occasion of the huge retrospective 'General Idea' at the National Gallery of Canada, Ontario, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2022-2023), this volume constitutes the most comprehensive source on the Canadian collective General Idea, founded in Toronto in 1969 by Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal, and AA Bronson, and active until the death of Partz and Zontal in 1994.The volume is arranged in three parts: I. Performances and Actions; II. In the Streets; III. In the Showroom. The first two parts focus on works and methods that extend beyond the traditional museum exhibition, documenting ephemeral, time-based, and even disposable works. The third part includes a plates section offering a near-complete visual survey of General Idea's practice. Facing-page comparative images show works as they appeared in historical installations and other relevant contexts.These three sections correspond broadly to the collective's development: from performances, actions, pageants, and other practices (1969-1978), through works engaging with mass media formats such as the magazine, broadcast television, and video (1972-1980s), moving finally to works conceived for galleries and museums (1985-1994).The publication features a prologue by AA Bronson, a conversation between AA Bronson and Beatrix Ruf, and newly commissioned texts by established scholars--all offering new primary source texts on General Idea. The appendix includes a complete scholarly bibliography, exhibition and performance histories, and an illustrated chronology of the group--newly edited and compiled for the first time.Conceived by AA Bronson in close collaboration with designer Garrick Gott and editor Adam Welch, the design is integral to the publication's overall concept. Each section has a distinct visual identity and graphic treatment. Moreover, the book itself functions as a kind of edition, evoking General Idea's characteristic preoccupation with borrowing and redeploying cultural phenomena: here, the museum exhibition catalogue. At once complicit and critical, the book is an extension of the group's strategy of subversive interventions into art world systems.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50888082456849,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50888082751761,"sku":"NGR9783037645857","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52761096683793,"sku":"NIN9783037645857","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/3037645857.jpg?v=1751284298"},{"product_id":"glamour-is-theft-a-user-s-guide-to-general-idea-book-general-idea-9780921972662","title":"Glamour Is Theft: A User's Guide to General Idea","description":"From its origins in the mail art movement through to its “destruction” of The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion in 1977, the Canadian collective General Idea constructed a comprehensive body of work as a performative fiction. Glamour Is Theft examines this “pageantry of camp parody” through the logic of its mythic system. The book reconstructs this system from statements that were dispersed and disguised within General Idea’s work and writing as a whole, including the publication FILE Magazine. In General Idea’s system, there is one concept: Glamour; one operation: reversibility; one technique: cut-up; one strategy: theft; one tactic: camouflage. Following the collective’s strategies, the book in turn mimics the language of structuralist and semiological publications of the 1970s while also considering the influences of Roland Barthes, William Burroughs, Guy Debord, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Marshall McLuhan on General Idea’s work.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51009533542673,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51009536622865,"sku":"NIN9780921972662","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52149332377873,"sku":"NLS9780921972662","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0921972660.jpg?v=1750980624"},{"product_id":"general-idea-p-is-for-poodle-book-general-idea-9780998631295","title":"General Idea: P Is for Poodle","description":"The poodle as emblem in the subversive multimedia works of the influential Canadian collective  Founded in Toronto in 1969 by AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal, General Idea implemented media critique and queer theory in paintings, posters, photographs, installations, videos, magazines and other multiples.  Known for “its wit, pampered presence and ornamental physique,” the poodle arrived into the visual lexicon of General Idea in the early 1980s and quickly became a vehicle by which the group addressed issues ranging from sexual stereotypes to the commodification of contemporary art. However, beyond its use as an agent of subtle yet substantive political and social critique, the poodle also served as a kind of heraldic device—an emblem for the mythology of General Idea and its processes of mythmaking. Through its various incarnations of the poodle, General Idea strived for a metanarrative that skirted the boundaries between artifact and artifice; history and fantasy; truth and fiction.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51011765305617,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51011768353041,"sku":"NIN9780998631295","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52126781735185,"sku":"NLS9780998631295","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0998631299.jpg?v=1751365282"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/collections\/author-books-by-general-idea.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}