Canadian artist group General Idea (1969–1994) produced an important body of work in various media and formats, which continues to be a reference point for generations of artists. The three founding members, AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal worked and lived together until the deaths of Partz and Zontal in 1994. Their works touch upon topics such as mass media, body and identity, issues of gender and sexual representation, HIV/AIDS activism, and the myth of the artist and the group itself. Begun in the mid-1980s, General Idea’s self-portraits titled Three Men Series present the artists as a shared identity and play a central role in their artistic practice. In these staged photographs, the artists appear disguised as poodles (P is for Poodle, 1983/1989), children tucked into one bed (Baby Makes 3, 1984/1989), college graduates (Nightschool, 1986), seal pups in a frozen landscape (Fin de Siècle, 1994), and doctors (Playing Doctor, 1992). Installed atop TV test pattern–printed wallpaper, each of these self-portraits takes as point of reference a specific body of work and, as a set, metonymically presents major works in the group’s development of its self-mythologizing practice.
