General Idea
Life & Work by Sarah E.K. Smith
5. The artists described the site as “the only location in Toronto combining the appropriate elements
of milieu, elegance and formality.” General Idea to Denis Young, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto,
June 9, 1971, Correspondence, Group 6, 1971, “The 1971 Miss General Idea Pageant,” Projects
Series, General Idea fonds, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, Ottawa.
6. AA Bronson, correspondence with author, January 3, 2016.
7. Typed document, Group 4, 1971, “The 1971 Miss General Idea Pageant,” Project Series, General
Idea fonds, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, Ottawa.
8. AA Bronson, correspondence with author, January 4, 2016.
9. AA Bronson, correspondence with author, January 4, 2016.
10. Fern Bayer, “Uncovering the Roots of General Idea: A Documentation and Description of Early
Projects 1968–1975,” The Search for the Spirit: General Idea 1968–1975 (Toronto: Art Gallery of
Ontario, 1997), 74.
Key Works: Glamour Issue
1. The publication was officially located within the non-profit organization Art Official Inc., chartered
by AA Bronson, Jorge Zontal, and Felix Partz in 1971. Fern Bayer, Peggy Gale, Art Metropole,
“Preamble,” Digital Occasional Paper No. 1, January 1971–April 2006, 2, Art Metropole’s
Publications and Events History with Related Ephemera, National Gallery of Canada Library and
Archives, Ottawa, https://www.gallery.ca/
images/content/artmetchron_e.pdf.
2. General Idea, “Editorial: Stretch That Social Fabric,” FILE Megazine, 29 (1989): 3.
3. Gwen Allen, “The Magazine as Mirror: FILE, 1972–1989,” Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative
Space for Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011), 147.
4. The other key text in the issue was “Treatise on Gorgeousness,” by John Jack Baylin, a gay
Canadian artist who also went by the pseudonym “Count Fanzini.” He also created the FETISH
T-shirt frequently worn by Bronson.
5. Luke Nicholson, “Being Framed by Irony: AIDS and the Art of General Idea” (MA thesis,
Concordia University, 2006), 121.
6. AA Bronson, correspondence with author, January 6, 2016.
7. See also AA Bronson, “Myth as Parasite, Image as Virus: General Idea’s Bookshelf, 1967–1975,”
The Search for the Spirit: General Idea 1968–1975 (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1997), 17–20.
8. General Idea, “Glamour,” FILE Megazine, vol. 3, no. 1 (fall 1975): 22.
9. Quoted in Fern Bayer, “Uncovering the Roots of General Idea: A Documentation and Description
of Early Projects 1968–1975,” The Search for the Spirit: General Idea 1968–1975 (Toronto: Art
Gallery of Ontario, 1997), 110.
10. In 1978 General Idea created a variant on the 1975 “Glamour Issue.” Using about one hundred
copies of the original 1975 issue, they added a screen-printed image of Toronto’s CN Tower to the
cover of the issue. They gave these away at High Profile, their fake 10th anniversary party. Fern
Bayer, correspondence with author, February 17, 2016.
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