White AIDS #3

General IdeaWW-1992-128225

1992·Gesso on canvas·152.4 × 152.4 cm (60 × 60 in.)

General Idea was formed in 1969 by AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal. AA Bronson, born Michael Tims, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (born 1946). Felix Partz, born Ronald Gabe, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 1945-1994. Jorge Zontal, born Slobodan Saia-Levy, Parma, Italy, 1944-1994. The group was dissolved with the deaths of Partz and Zontal in 1994. For 25 years, General Idea forged a single, mythologized identity, presenting self-conscious parodies of the art world and consumer culture. In 1987, in response to an invitation to create work for the Art against AIDS benefit, the group appropriated the colors and design of Robert Indiana’s widely quoted LOVE (1965), reconfiguring the image to read AIDS. Producing wallpaper, stamps, public sculpture, posters, and bill-boards, General Idea spread its AIDS logo throughout art institutions and transportation systems in the United States and Europe. The letters in White AIDS #3 are obscured by layers of white gesso, a haunting, somber reflection on the epidemic that would take the lives of two of the three members of the group.

Catalogue

Year: 1992
Medium: Gesso on canvas
Dimensions: 152.4 × 152.4 cm (60 × 60 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: General Idea

Artist

General Idea

Photography

General Idea was a Canadian artist collective active from 1969 to 1994, known for provocative interventions in photography, video, and installation that engaged with mass media, consumer culture, and the AIDS crisis. Working across appropriation, performance, and institutional critique, the group produced iconic works including their reinvention of the Miss General Idea Pageant and large-scale photographic series that subverted advertising and fashion imagery. Their practice anticipated conceptual strategies that became central to contemporary art in the 1980s and 1990s.

Toronto, ON, Canada

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