Work of trio of Canadian artists known as General Idea is not merely visually arresting and thematically challenging, it’s also exuberant and funny
Somehow, I had forgotten about the seal pups and the ice floe until I entered a room at the National Gallery of Canada this month to be confronted by blinding whiteness. This installation by the trio of Canadian artists known as General Idea is as startling to behold today as it was in 1990, and in the midst of a large retrospective exhibition, I was transported back to the awe of that first viewing.
in their work. What was the meaning of the seal pups? Was this an ecological message? Polystyrene, the material of so many coffee cups, isn’t biodegradable, although a small sign in the gallery politely reassures today’s viewer that the boards will be recycled.is more transparent. In the late 1980s, General Idea had begun a series about the AIDS crisis and, unbeknownst to their public, by 1990 both Zontal and Partz had learned they were HIV-positive.
The three artists, dubbed General Idea when a gallery mistook the title of a work for the group’s name, rose rapidly in the art world as masters of satirical social critique and ironic cultural play. Those in the know might trace a particular strand to Partz’s skill as a painter, Zontal’s work in film or Bronson’s experience with co-ops and communes, but the trio always insisted that every work was simply GI.
The move to the poodle paintings, supposedly excavated from the ruins of the pavilion, mocked the expressionist painting movement of the 1980s, which often featured images of snarling hounds. It was a welcome new direction, but revealed that GI, usually so prescient about cultural developments, was falling out of fashion.The painful irony is that AIDS reinvigorated GI’s career even as HIV infected Partz and Zontal.
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