General Idea

Serious Humour

General Idea consisted of Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson and came to an end in 1994, with the untimely deaths of Partz and Zontal caused by AIDS. The artist group critiqued popular media and the art world through witty and visually arresting artworks. They took on mass media, consumer culture, queer identity, the art economy, social inequality, and the AIDS epidemic with their unique brand of ‘serious humor’: a subversive and absurdist approach to language and imagery, always with an earnest intent. General Idea can be regarded as pioneers of ‘creative activism’: their practice of inserting artworks directly into the public sphere, as they did with their AIDS posters, laid the groundwork for conceptually­ driven activist engagement for a new generation of artists.

Pop Art to the Next Level

General Idea, like their Pop Art contemporaries, fully embraced mass media, always spinning it with their satirical and critical messages. Their involvement with all kinds of mass media was unprecedented for artists. General Idea always encouraged the public to interact with their work playfully, through mail art, in museums, and on the street.

The Biggest-Ever Survey at the Stedelijk

Thanks to its special relationship with General Idea, the Stedelijk can now present the largest-­ever survey of their oeuvre. In 1979, the Stedelijk was the first museum in the world to host an exhibition of their work and began collecting it. Because of this history, General Idea came to consider Amsterdam as their ‘second home’ and gifted the Stedelijk a large part of General Idea’s archive in 2018, making the museum a major knowledge center for their work. With over 300 works, this traveling exhibition’s stop in the Netherlands is a second homecoming for General Idea.

More info on the website.