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General IdeaCoeur Volant1995
1995
About the Item
In 1967, General Idea was founded in Toronto by AA Bronson (b. 1946), Felix Partz (1945-1994), and Jorge Zontal (1944-1994). Over the course of 25 years, they made a significant contribution to postmodern and conceptual art in Canada and beyond.
The group was both prolific and multi-disciplinary long before it became de rigueur. They worked across a wide range of media including photography, sculpture, painting, mail art, video, installations, multiples, and performance.
With their interest in parody and appropriation, General Idea addressed a broad range of social (and art-world) issues such as the cult of the artist, mass media, queer identity, and consumerism.
While General Idea is not typically associated with appropriation artists (think Barbara Kruger, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince) much of their output from the late 80s and early 90s is aligned with the Pictures Generation artists and their contemporaries. While these artists used mass-market images, notably advertising, or banal consumer goods, General Idea tinkered with fancy, Queer, or canonical images and blue-chip references.
Their most iconic work appropriated Robert Indiana’s “LOVE”. General Idea subverted his iconic work to read "AIDS" using the same font and bold color arrangement of red/green/blue as the original. But this was not the only art history hijacking General Idea did.
Using the distinguishable palette of primary red, blue, and green became a mainstay in General Idea’s work, another subtle iteration of a group self-portrait where each member declares a color.
This work is a reinterpretation of Marcel Duchamp’s iconic heart design first realized in 1936.
“Coeur Volant” is an extraordinary example of General Idea’s use of appropriation. Here Duchamp's blue and red palette is replaced with a surprising deviation from General Idea's signature palette of red, blue, and green.
This unique combination, which swaps red for a florescent orange, originates from a color study by Partz. The study was brought to life and distributed as a gift to the artist's inner circle. As with the best of their work, the colors not only represent the artists but the idea of another iconic work falling victim to contagion.
If one is unaware of the Duchamp references, or the idea of contagion and the "Image Virus" the arrangement of four “fluttering” hearts is remarkably pleasing, almost decorative. Like many of General Idea's best works, on the surface, the work can seem playful and reverential, when in fact it is conveying something cynical or sinister.
Conversely one could argue that the appropriated hearts represent something more optimistic, that the repetition of the shapes is signifying love, empathy, brotherhood, or unity.
General Idea created these hearts in a series of 4. The black-on-black version is in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Vancouver. The white-on-white version in the permanent collection of the Museo Ettore Fico (Turin, Italy). The blue-on-blue version, inspired by Yves Klien, has been held in a private collection in Switzerland since 2009.
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“Coeur Volant”
Canada, 1995
Acrylic, wax on heart-shaped medium-density fibreboard
Signed, dated, and inscribed, verso.
9.25"H 9.25"W 1"D
Very good condition
- Creator:
- Creation Year:1995
- Dimensions:Height: 9.25 in (23.5 cm)Width: 9.25 in (23.5 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Very good condition.
- Gallery Location:Toronto, CA
- Reference Number:Seller: 11-231stDibs: LU215213447682
General Idea
General Idea was commissioned by the Toronto Stock Exchange to install a work/mural. Shortly after the TSX published two prints, a lithograph poster and a limited edition print. However, most of the edition was destroyed/thrown away, when they moved from the trading floor at the TD Centre to their offices. As a result, the work has almost achieved mythological status amongst General Idea collectors.
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