Marty Spellerberg

From FILE Megazine to Art Metropole: The Radical Vision of General Idea

General Idea was a collective of Canadian artists Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal, and AA Bronson, who were active from 1967 to 1994. From 1968 through 1993, they divided their time between Toronto and New York.

General Idea’s work inhabited and subverted forms of popular and media culture, including boutiques, television talk shows, trade fair pavilions, mass media, and beauty pageants. Their output contained postcards, prints, posters, wallpaper, balloons, crests, and pins. The collective moved between traditional art spaces such as galleries and museums to mass-market sites such as newsstands in search of a broad audience.

FILE Megazine, published 1972–1989, was an art and culture magazine written, edited, and published by General Idea. Epitomizing the group’s desire that the magazine be a “parasite within the world of magazine distribution,” FILE’s visual design and identity were a deliberate appropriation of Life magazine. Editorials for each issue elaborated on the group’s core conceptual principles. The style of these editorials is noteworthy for its heavily ironic use of language, a parody of advertising copy laced with double entendres.

The publication was a record and site of activity for the mail/correspondence-art movement. Material for the publication was sourced from submissions by a network of mail-art correspondents, making it the first mail-art project in magazine format.

Both Partz and Zontal died of AIDS in 1994. Bronson continues to work and exhibit as an independent artist and was the director of Printed Matter, Inc. in New York between 2006 and 2011. The General Idea archive now resides at the Library and Archives of the National Gallery of Canada.

Art Metropole

After publishing FILE Megazine for two years and amassing a large collection of artists’ books and multiples, General Idea founded Art Metropole in 1974 to allow other artists to access their distribution system. The collective received a grant to establish “a collection agency devoted to the documentation, archiving, and distribution of all the images. Art Metropole intends to keep abreast of the tide, housing, and distributing evidence of activity and imagery: magazines, publications, videos, correspondence, snapshots, memories, and the ephemeral flood.”

The collection continued until 1996, when Jay Smith purchased and donated it to the National Gallery of Canada.

In 1975, Art Metropole initiated a first-in-the-world artist video distribution service. This service was discontinued in 1987 when Art Metropole began publishing artist videos in VHS format for general distribution.

Art Metropole also established a publishing program. “Performance by Artists,” 1977, was the first of a series of resource books on new artists’ media. In 1982, Art Metropole published “Museums by Artists” and toured the accompanying exhibition.

Art Metropole inserted artist works into spaces typically reserved for commercial communication. For the 1987 series “Ads by Artists,” Art Metropole commissioned artists to produce artworks for conventional advertising space in the advertising section of international art magazines. The organization followed this project in 1997 with “Billboards by Artists,” which commissioned billboards in downtown Toronto.

Art Metropole now operates the oldest and longest-running artist-run bookstore in the world. The shop is located at 896 College Street in Toronto, Canada. With over 16,000 items in inventory, it stocks artists’ publications on contemporary art in all formats—books, multiples, video, audio, and electronic media.

In 2025, Blair Swann, an artist, was the Executive Director. Katie Lawson, a curator and writer, was the Board President.

Sources:

• Art Metropole
• General Idea Life & Work by Sarah E.K. Smith
• Artspace – Beauty Pageant As Art: The Gender-Bending ‘Miss General Idea’ of 1971
• Artsy – General Idea, P is for Poodle
• Artists’ Books and Multiples – Art Metropole’s first space
• Toronto Life – Inside Art Metropole’s new College Street space
• Wikipedia – General Idea
• Wikipedia – FILE Megazine

Posted January 2025