“The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion”

Philip Monk, by curating “The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion,” recants his earlier view on General Idea outlined in a talk in Toronto, 1982, that was later published as an article in Parachute titled “Editorials: General Idea and the Myth of Inhabitation,” 1983. Mixing French theory, notably Barthes, and Marxism, Monk claimed General Idea “reflect[s] the form of capitalism they wish to criticize.” He now agrees that the capitalist structures, notably celebrity and glamour, which the group inhabited for parody’s sake, did not overpower General Idea’s importance. The exhibition, consequently, begins as a highlight, if not the apogee, of Monk’s working relationship with General Idea. It finishes outstanding amidst the twenty plus solo shows held since it disbanded in 1994—for focusing on some of General Idea’s most intellectually rigorous work and for succinctly outlining its historic context.

In adjacent galleries, the exhibition recreates two seminal General Idea installations Going Thru the Motions and Reconstructing Futures, first exhibited at the Carmen Lamanna Gallery respectively in 1975 and 1977. Entering the first gallery, you pass a bas-relief functioning as dividing wall titled The Hoarding of the 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion, 1975, originally installed on the exterior front of the Carmen Lamanna Gallery. Then comes the 1975 pavillion’s centrepiece: two Venetian-blind sculptures Massing Studies for the Pavillion #1 and #2, 1975, red-and-black double ziggurat and suspended red triple ziggurat forms. These, actually, were the gowns worn by Miss General Idea contestants in the mock pageant held at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1975. On this gallery’s wall is the Showcard Series, 1975, borrowed images and original text on over 100 layout sheets—pre-computer publication design material that now lends a low-tech, nostalgic sense to the installation. Originally the installation, with its Orwellian year reference, carried “back to the future” connotations because many images on the layout sheets were appropriated from magazines from the forties and fifties, most often Fortune. Other images refer to the mythological Miss General Idea: her “spirit,” which General Idea visualizes as an icon shaped like a human hand, and the ziggurat motif representative of her gown. The text spells out the specific ideas behind General Idea, such as their adoption of the clichéd role of the artist: “We were conscious of the importance of berets and paint brushes.” This role formed a “framing device” for their practice. Interspersed with the showcards are five architectural blueprints, exhibiting plans, for instance, for the seating of the 1984 Miss General Idea Pageant Pavillion.

In the next room is the destroyed pavillion—a deconstruction following the 1975 construction. Documentation of the pavillion’s fictional fire—a performance General Idea held in Kingston, Ontario, in 1977 using smoke bombs along with rubble simulating ruins—comprises two panoramic black-and-white photo panels on the left and right side of the gallery. On the floor is a carpet shaped like an artist’s palette, implying the pavillion was the work of the stereotypical painter-genius, a parodic avatar for the three members of General Idea whose larger-than-life portrait peers over it through a curved metal screen.

The two Miss General Idea pavillions, centring on the mainstream, prime-time glam of the iconic beauty pageant, illustrated General Idea’s oft-quoted, straightforward 1975 mission statement: “We wanted to be famous, glamourous and rich.” The irony is General Idea could only be a hilariously low-rent burlesque of such Warholian success, being a group of Canadian artists working through a publicly funded cultural system in a modest-sized city with a tepid art market.

Yet their unrealizable ambitions made art history: their media mockery predated the critical appropriation of the mass media by New York’s Pictures Generation (Jack Goldstein, Cindy Sherman, David Salle, et al). And locally, General Idea introduced a colourful queer voice to grey Toronto, where, as pioneering Canadian drag queen Craig Russell said in 1977, “The only female impersonators are women.”

While recreating these installations marks General Idea’s importance in hindsight, Monk simultaneously provides insight into General Idea’s discursive practice as well as their literary influence through a concise punctuation of the two pavillions in a small back room behind them. A half-hour television show produced by General Idea for TV Ontario titled Pilot, 1977, featuring General Idea explaining their art in a talk show send-up, screens on a small monitor. A vitrine displays plans and invitations for the original Carmen Lamanna shows along with two issues of General Idea’s FILE magazine containing images from the two pavillions (an adjacent browsing table offers the complete FILE collection). Most significant, though, is a tiny bookshelf holding source books for General Idea by, for example, Burroughs, Levi-Strauss and Barthes. These texts, especially Barthes’s Mythologies, figure prominently in the Miss General Idea Pavillion and, consequently, merit this inclusion.

Even though the exhibition so clearly outlines the context of General Idea’s practice from 1975 to 1977, it is still remarkable how, at that time, Toronto critics failed to note the growing significance behind General Idea’s antics. The press material includes two pans of the exhibition by James Purdie and Gary Michael Dault: Purdie’s 1975 Globe and Mail review of Going thru the Motions reads as a string of dismissives ranging from “elitist” to “shallow;” Dault’s review of the same exhibition advises Toronto Star readers that “someone has to tell them how long their train’s been gone.” To extend this tired metaphor, their train, indeed, stopped in arrivals not in departures. Thankfully, Monk has conceded that General Idea proved their critics wrong in an exhibition marking not just one critic’s evolution, but, by implication, that of a cultural generation. ❚

“The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion” was exhibited at the Art Gallery of York University in Toronto from September 15 to December 6, 2009.

Earl Miller is an independent art writer and curator residing in Toronto.