General Idea was founded in Toronto in 1967 by AA Bronson (b. 1946), Felix Partz (1945–1994), and Jorge Zontal (1944–1994).
Over the course of 25 years, the trio made a significant contribution to postmodern and conceptual art in Canada and internationally. With their subversive approach and interest in parody and appropriation, General Idea addressed a broad range of social (and art world) issues including consumerism, pharmaceuticals, pageantry and the cult of the artist.
"Magic Palette" is a particularly playful example of the group's interest in the intersection of art and commerce. The work consists of six brightly coloured anodized aluminum drinking cups, each with a magnetic base, arranged on a reflective, chromed-metal palette. A clever visual pun, the object transforms an artist's familiar tool into an unconventional cocktail service.
The work was conceived for the Boutique at the 1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion, an imagined institution that became one of the group's most ambitious ongoing projects. Designed as a cultural laboratory and retail kiosk, the Boutique offered a series of conceptual objects and cocktail-related multiples that satirized the marketing strategies of both the art and pharmaceutical industries.
Accompanied by The Getting into the Spirits Cocktail Book, the palette invited viewers to become participants in General Idea's elaborate fiction. With its jewel-toned cups and mirror-like surface, the work is simultaneously an elegant design object, a functional curiosity, and a pointed critique of the seductive power of consumer culture. Implicating the audience as host, GI hoped that their art elixirs would have the same potency as the pharmaceutical industry in their ability to get “under the skin.”
Questions about this piece? Contact us, call +1.416.704.1720, or visit our Toronto Gallery.
"The Magic Palette" [a.k.a. Magic Cocktail Palette or Magic Palette]
Canada, 1980
6 magnetic anodized aluminum cups on chromed-metal palette and The Getting into the Sprirts Cocktail Book from the 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion (soft cover book with tipped-on chromogenic print); in plastic box with gold hot-stamping
Numbered 50/AP in marker on plastic box; numbered 50/96 in pencil inside book cover
5.5"H 19.75"W 14"D (object)
6"H 20"W 15"D (box)
Overall good condition; Detailed report by request
Literature (selected)
- General Idea: Multiples 1967-1993 (#72)
- General Idea Editions: 1967-1995 (Mississauga: Blackwood Gallery, 2003), #8011
- Manner/sm, a theory of culture, exhibition catalogue, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, 1982, 42 (ill.), 76
- Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, ICA
(Institute of Contemporary Art), Boston (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1986), 70 (ill.)
- Buchholz, Daniel and Gregorio Magnani, eds. International Index of Multiples from Duchamp to the Present (Tokyo and Cologne: Spiral/Wacoal Art Center and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 1992), 76
- Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2009, exhibition catalogue, Tokyo
Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, 2009, 182
- Haute Culture: General Idea. A Retrospective 1969-1994, 214 (ill., book cover’s chromogenic print)
Exhibited:
- General Idea’s Carmen-Lamanna Gallery-The Boutique from the 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion, Carmen Lamanna Gallery, Toronto, 1980-81
- De la Catastrophe, Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland, 1982
- Manner/sm, a theory of culture, VAG, Vancouver, 1982
- Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture, ICA, Boston, 1986
- General Idea’s ¥en Boutique, Galerie Esther Schipper, Cologne, Germany, 1989
- General Idea (a.k.a. PLA©EBO / General Idea’s ¥en Boutique), STAMPA, Basel, Switzerland, 1991
- General Idea: Multiples, SLSG, Toronto, 1993
- General Idea Editions: 1967-1995, touring 2003-07
- Trade Show, MASS MoCA, North Adams, USA, 2005
- Dorm, The Model, Sligo, Ireland, 2010
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