General Idea
Life & Work by Sarah E.K. Smith
Idea’s collaboration, as the group’s domestic lives and art production were very much
entwined.
Bronson recalls the group’s desire to have critics discuss their work in terms of
sexuality and has said the group baited art critics by “being more and more outrageous
all of the time.”
18
For instance, Mondo Cane Kama Sutra, 1984, clearly depicts trios of
fornicating neon poodles. The poodle was a key symbol in General Idea’s oeuvre,
primarily intended as a clichéd image that signifies gayness in mainstream North
American culture: Bronson has said, “The poodle stands for the queer artist.”19 Despite
the overt sexual imagery in the paintings, critics discussed these works in relation to the
trio’s artistic collaboration. Finally, by 1986, General Idea was written about in terms of
queer identity.20 The shift, Bronson noted, was one of attitude: “Prior to that it was just
considered embarrassing or something.”
21
Following the end of General Idea’s collaboration in 1994, with the deaths of Partz
and Zontal, some contemporary scholars—such as Virginia Solomon—have sought to
address the queer dimension of the group’s work.22
The Medium is the Message
General Idea analyzed and critiqued media and
popular culture by appropriating existing cultural
structures, such as beauty pageants,
magazines, and television formats, and by using
mimicry, irony, and humour to subversive ends.
A key influence in this regard was Canadian
communication theorist Marshall McLuhan
(1911–1980), who rose to prominence in the
1960s with his ideas about popular culture,
communication technology, and media theory.
In his key writings, McLuhan addresses
media and how communications technology
shapes the messages it conveys and affects
social organization. In Understanding Media:
LEFT: Yousuf Karsh, Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980), 1974 (printed later), gelatin silver print,
19 x 24.1 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa RIGHT: Cover of the first paperback edition of Marshall
McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965, cover design by
Rudolph de Harak
The Extensions of Man, 1964, he focuses
particularly on television. This text is the source
of McLuhan’s pithy phrase “the medium is the message,” which gained widespread
popularity.23
McLuhan had a broad influence on the members of General Idea, who read his
books in the 1960s.24 Though his influence was not limited to their thinking about
television formats, McLuhan’s notion that the social effects of media deserve critical
analysis informed General Idea’s appropriation of the beauty pageant. This made-fortelevision structure significantly shaped work the group made in the 1970s, especially
the satirical mail art and performance work The 1971 Miss General Idea Pageant,
1971. This project allowed General Idea to unpack issues of gender stereotyping and
celebrity culture, topics they continued to explore in much of their work.
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