General Idea | Passion over Reason

 

General Idea

Passion over Reason

Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 1991

24 x 20.5 cm.

Open Edition

One of ten chenille and embroidery on crest-shaped felt patches produced by General Idea between 1988 and 1991. Intended as an unlimited edition, fewer than a hundred copies were made. In 2010, a second iteration of 100 were released as a fundraiser for the  Kunsthalle Basel.

The crest combines the ziggurat form with a phallic take on the fleur de lis.

Felix Partz produced a first series of Ziggurat paintings in the late sixties before the inception of the group, which were later absorbed into the General Idea oeuvre. The motif appears again in the Miss General Idea’s venetian blind dress and the 1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion.

It’s unclear if the title was a response to Joyce Weiland’s Reason over Passion, from 1968 [see next post].

“We were brought up in the post-war period, and we were interested in the idea of progress and images of progress.  We didn’t believe in progress as a concept.  We were interested in how it dominated the post-war imagination.  If you look at business magazines from the ’50s, for example Fortune Magazine, the advertising features a lot of skyscrapers, which are always stepped.  This image of the ziggurat always dominates.  It is an image of power or even male power […] the ziggurat came to represent the future, the strength of progress and technological change and the male power of construction.”

-  AA Bronson, interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist