General Idea

In 1968 AA Bronson, Jorge Zontal, and Félix Partz reinvented themselves as the artists' group General Idea, producing films, videos, performances, and photographs, all of which functioned in unison. As they stated in 1975, "General Idea is basically this: a framing device within which we inhabit the role of the artist as we see the living legend." They reimagined themselves as figures of popular culture, courting fame, fortune, and glamour. If an investigation into the nature of glamour was the principal concern of their early works, it found its quintessential expression in the various beauty pageants that they started to develop in 1970. More specifically, the 1984 Miss General Idea Beauty Pageant and the subsequent 1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion elaborated framing structures that reference forms of popular entertainment. General Idea sought the pleasures of the so-called entertainment industry, devising different modes of dissemination--for instance, publicity/promo shots of their various masks of identity and a video documenting the orchestrated and programmed cheers of an audience. In Let's Entertain, General Idea is represented by General Idea's Yen Boutique (1991), which features several General Idea multiples.