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In the late 1960s, the Canadian artists AA Bronson (b. 1946), Felix Partz (1945–94), and Jorge Zontal (1944–94)—all pseudonyms—came together to form General Idea, an experimental, groundbreaking, and profoundly influential artist group. Playing with the forms and operations of the mass media and popular culture, as well as the art world, they created a parodic body of work that resulted in a magazine, a beauty pageant, a world’s fair-type pavilion, an artist bookstore, media campaigns, and ephemera, along with more traditional artworks. “The group’s strategy,” according to the scholar Nicholas Croggon, “drawing from Susan Sontag’s idea of camp and from the queer science fiction of William S. Burroughs, was to appropriate these cultural forms and images, exposing their power and using their viral nature to spread alternative, more subversive, messages.”

The AIDS crisis in the late 1980s led the group to focus on the epidemic, and their attention coalesced on the word “AIDS” itself, configured as an image in a format appropriated from the Pop artist Robert Indiana’s famous “LOVE” and realized as paintings, posters, wallpaper, advertisements, sculptures, and more. AIDS would claim the lives of Partz and Zontal in 1994. Since then, Bronson has embarked upon an acclaimed career as a solo artist and shamanic healer.

At Independent 20th Century this fall, Mitchell-Innes & Nash from New York presents a curated survey of General Idea’s work, focusing on a selection of major paintings by the group from the 1980s and ‘90s.

In this interview, Bronson speaks with fellow artist Michael Bühler-Rose about General Idea, appropriation, and impact of AIDS. The interview took place on Zoom on June 30th, 2026. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Viral Images: A Conversation with AA Bronson - Features - Independent Art Fair

General Idea, Self-portrait with Objects, 1981–82, montage, gelatin silver print,
14 x 10 7/8 inches (35.6 × 27.7 cm). © The Estate of General Idea.
Courtesy of the Estate and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Michael Bühler-Rose: I have been thinking a lot about appropriation, but also the idea of “bootlegging,” and I wonder when did you first come across the Robert Indiana “LOVE”? From my perspective, it is hard to conceive of it ever not existing, as it seems to have very quickly moved into the canon. It was painted in 1964 and by ‘65, it was the Museum of Modern Art’s Christmas card.

AA Bronson: General Idea did not start till 1969 but I am pretty sure I already was familiar with it by then. In ‘63, there was a traveling MoMA exhibition [Americans 1963] that went to the National Gallery of Canada. I lived in Ottawa and I would go to the National Gallery a couple times a month because there was nothing else to do in that town and I was a very solitary kid. It included Claes Oldenburg, Robert Indiana, Marisol, and Ad Reinhardt. Most of them were unknown at the time or only known in New York. Ad Reinhardt’s black squares were in that. I must have seen the exhibition four or five times while it was up. And that became a big influence on General Idea.

That was too early for the “LOVE” painting, but I would have seen the greeting card immediately when it came out because the National Gallery of Canada carried all the MoMA greeting cards.

I was just a ravenous teenager trying to get anything I could. So, I think the first time I saw it was as a greeting card. I am not even sure I have ever seen the painting.

MB-R: Do you know if Felix or Jorge also saw that show?

AAB: No, they did not. But Felix was very well-read in contemporary art in a much deeper way than I was. He was really a maniac about keeping on top of all the latest things, reading all the art magazines, and so on. So, he was certainly familiar with all that work. Jorge had spent the previous two summers before General Idea started—the summers of ‘66, ‘67, and maybe ‘68 as well—in New York. So, he was there and he was familiar with the work, just from having spent time there.

General Idea, AIDS, 1987, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72 inches (182.9 x 182.9 cm).
© The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of the Estate.

MB-R: General Idea’s “AIDS” works reference these super-iconic Robert Indiana works, and I think about two ways of working with that. One is using established tropes, because they already function with this “image virus” function, to borrow the term. They are established and can move really quickly.

But on the other side, it seems different than appropriation in that you are working through some other artists’ work. Do you see the work as purely your own or more as an extension of the original premises?

AAB: I am not sure I have an answer ready at hand. There are two periods of General Idea’s work. Up until 1984, appropriation is really the main theme that runs through all of it, and we developed it into one long complicated narrative. We moved to New York in 85–’86 and suddenly that narrative was too complicated. Nobody knew what the hell we were doing. It was too long an attention span for New York.

That is also the moment at which AIDS happened, and our best friend Robert Handforth, who worked in the Canadian consulate, died in St. Vincent’s Hospital, right next door to our house on West 12th Street.

Our dealer, Ealan Wingate really got what we were doing. When we first met him, we had shown him this idea that we had decided to discard and he could not get it out of his head. It was the “AIDS” logo in the form of the “LOVE” logo. So, we actually did that already in about ‘84.

It was just a drawing and we said that we thought it was too gross, too red, green, and blue, too light-hearted. It seemed really inappropriate, and yet we loved it. We did not know what to do. And it just sat there, and he said, “I think you should do it, and I think you should do it as a poster on the streets.” I think that was his idea, not ours.

It is a very General Idea idea, but it was as if he was waiting for us to do it, and we did not, so he pointed it out to us. And we did it and then the whole AIDS project just took off on its own, running through all the different media. We also did the posters on the subway, which was even better, because it was running into every neighborhood of the city. At that time, even rich people used the subway. When the subway went through the Upper East Side, it was seen by a very different audience than when it went through Brooklyn or something. So, that was a particularly great project. In the end, I think, there were about 75 different projects in different cities and in different countries. The great thing about it only saying “AIDS” and nothing else was that we could show it anywhere and people knew what it was. It communicated. We were not giving any advice; we were only saying the word “AIDS,” and that brought the subject out of not being mentioned to being mentioned, which was all that it needed, in a way.

MB-R: Was there some pushback on that by other groups?

AAB: In New York, there was. Nowhere else.

We were already in our 40s when we moved to New York. Many of the people in the other groups that were involved with AIDS were all in their 20s. It was a very different group. Also, frankly, we were illegal. We just walked over the border. We could not get involved in marches and demonstrations because we were afraid of getting thrown out of the country. So, we just did everything through the work.

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General Idea, IMAGEVIRUS, New York, 1987. © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of the Estate.

General Idea, IMAGEVIRUS, San Francisco, 1987. © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of the Estate.

General Idea, IMAGEVIRUS, Berlin, 1987. © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of the Estate.

General Idea, IMAGEVIRUS, 1987. © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of the Estate.

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MB-R: The transition from the posters to the paintings changes the function of the image to art, to a more traditional object.

AAB: It happened very naturally. We were asked to do it for the first fundraiser for amfAR [American Foundation for AIDS Research].

But I realize that my story is a little upside down. That was before the poster. After, we did the poster project, then we did the first lot of paintings, which Ealan showed. Then it took off from there.

Because we were so old when we came to New York, we had already had a lifetime of shows in Europe and Canada. We had dealers in Italy and in Paris and Amsterdam and so on. We had dealers around Europe. So, we began to use them as feeders to get projects going—both street projects and gallery projects—on the AIDS image, once we were living in New York.

MB-R: Coming back to the bootleg or appropriation, you said that you felt it was not quite understood at the time in New York. But you did continue with those earlier ideas, with Mondrian, Nauman, the Rietveld chair. How was that then processed and responded to?

General Idea, Infe©ted Mondrian 6, 1994, 17 3/4 x 17 3/4 inches (45 x 45 cm). © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of the Estate.

AAB: In a way, it was always there, going right back, because even [General Idea’s publication from 1972 to 1979] FILE Megazine is a takeoff of Life magazine. I know there is a key moment at which those things all started. We did a residency in Amsterdam in ‘79 at de Appel and made a videotape co-sponsored by the Stedelijk Museum. At that time, in the museum’s entrance lobby, there was a platform with furniture, including that Rietveld chair. Every time we went into the Stedelijk—and we were there almost every day—we saw that chair.

Later, there was the whole thing about “image virus” and our interest in that. When Jorge and Felix were both diagnosed—in ‘89, ‘90—we knew their time was limited. We had a liking—like the “LOVE” painting becoming the “AIDS” painting—for thinking of something and thinking, “No, no, we could never do that. Oh, we have got to do it, then.”

There are a series of exhibitions, I think all in Europe, in ‘93, ‘94, right at the end of their lives that included all these very direct takeoffs, transforming the originals mostly with the use of color—the red, green, and blue of the “AIDS” logo, as compared to the red, blue, and yellow of Mondrian’s originals.

Part of it, oddly enough, has to do with the medical system. The medical system in Canada was more advanced in many ways, as far as serving the public, than in the U.S.

We knew that, when they got to a certain point in their illness, we would have to move back to Canada. We moved back in the middle of ’93. The U.S. real estate market had collapsed a year or two before that and Canada followed a year or two later.

Felix found this penthouse in a very upscale apartment building. We moved in there and we had a couple of artist assistants. At the time, if you had a terminal illness, the Canadian medical system would send all the help you needed to your home. That included not only nurses and doctors but also cleaning staff.

We had this incredible support system and the three of us could sit there. We could not do anything big scale, because they were immobilized and could not do very much. Most of the ideas we came up with—and there were a lot—it was a steady stream of small stuff. They were also heavily medicated, so, it was, like, “Oh, I have got a great idea, let’s do blah, blah, blah.” The art was pouring out. It was incredible. Our assistant, Barr Gilmore, was hyperactive—“I wanna work, I wanna work”—so, production went into high gear. We produced so much stuff in those last few months.

MB-R: I always wondered how you managed, because the production was at such a high rate in that last period. I tried to picture the context and thought that if you were caretaking and managing all these things, but having such a large support system now, you could be a little freer to work.

AAB: Yes, and we were together 24 hours a day. It was an amazing period of creative freedom, very intense creative freedom. That was the plus side of it all.

General Idea, Infe©ted Rietveld Chair, 1994, acrylic on lacquered wood chair, 34 5/8 x 32 5/8 inches (88 x 83 cm). © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of the Estate.

MB-R: You were saying that was connected to the Mondrian and the Rietveld?

AAB: The first exhibition where we focused entirely on that work was [in the 1994 exhibition INFE©TED] at Mai 36 Galerie in Zurich. It happened two weeks after Jorge died. The stuff had already been shipped, and Jorge died and that was just after doing the installation in Paris of Fin de siècle (1990) [in the exhibition L’Hiver de L’Amour in 1994 at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris], which is the installation with a vast iceberg of Styrofoam and three fake stuffed baby seals. Felix died a few days after the opening at Mai 36 Galerie. That was the year when all that work was coming together and launched into the world.

MB-R: In the “AIDS” work, but also throughout General Idea’s production, the “image virus” seems to be about “infecting,” for lack of a better word, these canonical artists and works. Some of it is very subtle shifts—like the Rietveld chair or the Mondrian—just changing the color, so that it still has the same structure.

We can look at it and think it is the same thing, but I know that the Mondrian works are from reproductions, so the aspect ratios are off. They are stretched. So, you think, “Oh yeah, I know this work.” But, actually, it is slightly different, even from the start. The idea is a really interesting way of being able to own other works and infect them with a specific kind of quality and outlook.

AAB: It is always through media, and through the media by which we know the works, because, very often, I have never seen the work itself. We think we have, but we have actually only seen illustrations of the works.

MB-R: It has a looseness to it while maintaining a strong conceptual side. Were you always working with this preconceived concept, or did it just naturally all fit together in these interesting ways?

AAB: Both at once. We had already talked about the theme of “image virus” in FILE Megazine in the early ‘70s. That is how we conceived of FILE, as a kind of “image virus” that we could send out into the mainstream.

I think it is all pretty coherent that way. That is the theme from the beginning to the end.

MB-R: The virus becomes a real virus, which goes back to “image virus,” and it goes back and forth. It is pretty phenomenal.

AAB: It sounds insane to say, but, in a way, we were very lucky to have that virus appear when it did.

MB-R: It is a macabre situation.

AAB: It is a very peculiar history.

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General Idea, Black AIDS #6 [a.k.a. AIDS (Reinhardt) #6], 1991, oil with beeswax glaze on linen stretched over plywood panel, 64 1/2 x 64 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches (163.8 x 163.8 x 7 cm) framed. © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of the Estate and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

General Idea, White AIDS, 1993, gesso on canvas, 24 x 24 inches (61 x 61 cm). © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of The Estate and Mitchell-Innes &amp; Nash, New York.

General Idea, White AIDS, 1993, gesso on canvas, 24 x 24 inches (61 x 61 cm). © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of The Estate and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

General Idea, Great AIDS (Ultramarine Blue), 1990/2019, acrylic on linen, 59 x 59 inches (150 x 150 cm). © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of The Estate and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

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MB-R: The Black AIDS and the White AIDS paintings of the early 1990s relate to that first exhibition you saw with Ad Reinhardt. Seeing them again reminded me of studio visit you once did with me. It was at a crucial point when I was trying to figure out my future. I was making white-on-white drawings of different uses of the words “spirit” and “matter.” We talked about the subject and then you said, “These are really good, but you are never going to become an art star from this, because white-on-white just does not reproduce.” You proceeded to tell me about this sort of “image virus” idea, about how in General Idea you would think about how works could reproduce at different sizes, in black-and-white, in color. I constantly think about that.

AAB: I had forgotten all of those conversations. But yes, we talked about it in General Idea, all the time.

MB-R: The Black AIDS paintings and the White AIDS paintings function in dramatically different ways than the color works. They are very minimal works, and, I think, engaged in spirituality, or thinking about this idea of what comes after. AIDS is the starting point, or the cause of it, in both the image and the actual reality, but it is not the end result.

AAB: We did a whole show of black paintings, [in 1991 at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University]. It was when they were really very sick, and it was a kind of goodbye.

MB-R: A goodbye to them, or a goodbye to the “AIDS” paintings?

AAB: Both. Definitely a goodbye to them, though. And then something happened, and suddenly we were doing all these white things, like the Fin de siècle installation, and then we did a whole series of white-on-white “AIDS” paintings. When we thought that the black ones were going to be the last ones we would ever do, suddenly the white ones appeared. Then, it really felt that white was going to be the last body of work. And then, suddenly it was green, blue, red, green, blue, red, green, blue. Right at the end, there was suddenly an explosion of little pieces, all done in red, green, and blue—little Duchamp hearts, and all sorts of stuff.

The white “AIDS” paintings [turned out to be] much more of a goodbye. But the real goodbye was the exhibition [of large and small sculptures of pills] One Day of AZT/One Year of AZT at the National Gallery of Canada in 1994, which traveled to MoMA in 1996 [Projects 56: General Idea].

General Idea, Untitled (AIDS with Four Black Cockroaches), 1993, gouache on AIDS screenprint, 31 7/8 x 31 7/8 inches (81 x 81 cm). © The Estate of General Idea. Courtesy of the Estate and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

MB-R: It seems that it went through a threshold, mimicking death and an afterlife—wrapping up life, and then a light, and then a reincarnation of some sort.

AAB: Something like that. We had to just open ourselves to whatever seemed to be moving through us and just do it, without questioning it. We had to do it before we knew the logic of it totally, if it felt right, because we did not have much time.

MB-R: Did you have the same concerns about the graphic qualities of those minimal black and white paintings?

AAB: No. We did not need to think about career at that point. That was the last thing on our minds. I mean, they are impossible to reproduce anyway.

MB-R: I keep coming back to the idea that we do not need to see some works—or many works—in person. We often do not see them in person. But these works are ones that actually need a live viewer to function. We need to experience them and let the image slowly come out, and disappear, and create a—to use an overused art term—liminal space. They function really beautifully in that regard. They are meditative points.

AAB: Thank you. I like that.

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Michael Bühler-Rose is an artist based in New York and Mysore whose work spans sculpture, photography, installation, and wood inlay. His practice considers the circulation and material lives of images and objects, often engaging histories of collecting, display, reproduction, and appropriation. Recent solo presentations include Stems Gallery, Brussels; Kendall Koppe at Carlos/Ishikawa, London; New Discretions, New York; Halsey McKay, East Hampton; and Andrew Rafacz, Chicago. He has also exhibited alongside AA Bronson in a two-person exhibition at Nature Morte, Berlin, and in a collaborative installation/performance with Bronson at Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam. Bühler-Rose is the founder of Boot Foundation, an ongoing project exploring bootlegging and unauthorized tributes as acts of fandom.

Viral Images: A Conversation with AA Bronson