This volume presents an overview of the Canadian collective oeuvre — an oeuvre still haunted by Miss General Idea, a fictive character who was at once muse and object, image and concept. Founded in Toronto in 1969 by Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal — both disappeared in 1994 — and AA Bronson, the trio adopted a generic identity that “freed it from the tyranny of individual genius.” Their complex intermingling of reality and fiction took the form of a transgressive and often parodic take on art and society. Treating the image as a virus infiltrating every aspect of the real world, General Idea set out to colonize it, modify its content and so come up with an alternative version of reality.

Paintings, installations, sculptures, photographs, videos, magazines, and TV programs: General Idea’s is an authentically multimedia oeuvre, that has lost nothing of its freshness and can now be seen as anticipating certain aspects of a current art scene undergoing radical transformation. The book covers the collective’s main areas of concern and themes, such as the artist and the creative process, glamour as a creative tool, art’s links with the media and mass culture, architecture and archaeology, sexuality and AIDS, etc. Including newly commissioned essays and republished texts, it is richly illustrated with documents and reproductions of the most important projects realized by General Idea from 1969 to 1994.

45 graphic designers, 90 photographs, 10 years of books on contemporary art.

This book is based on an invitation to graphic designers to choose two books on contemporary art from the past decade whose design they think is particularly pertinent to the content, to photograph one double-page spread from each book and, if they wish, to comment on their choices.

Double Page provides a selection of recent art publications as viewed by graphic designers who are internationally known for their contribution to that field, and offers a glimpse at the role of book design today in our knowledge and understanding of contemporary art.

Shedding light on this prevalent relationship between art and graphic design by means of photography, Double Page constitutes an unprecedented document of how graphic designers see the work of their peers and their own practices as an essential part of the editorial process.