Art Articles & Reviews

} Peanuts By Robert Amos The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria has brought two complementary exhibits to Victoria. One is General Idea Editions from the Belkin Gallery at UBC in Vancouver (until September 4). It presents a wide range of cultural productions from Toronto’s General Idea, a collaborative group of artists who hollowed out popular media formats in which to breed their own cultural myths. The other is Mr. Peanut: Mayoralty Campaign 1974, in which a Vancouver artist in a Peanut costume invaded the popular theatrical form of a political campaign. Vincent Trasov assumed the alter ego of the well-known product icon Mr. Peanut as the frame of reference for his artwork and as a focal point through which our perceptions of the world could be filtered (until September 18). I met both Mr. Peanut and General Idea. in 1973. They represented the east and west coast branches of an “Eternal Network”, and embodied the artistic strategies which have guided me since. The artists involved were mutually supportive and helped one another to create a post-Pop art world which ignored the gallery system. They created “performance art”, “correspondence art”, “video art”, and the parallel gallery system. A Memoir In 1972 I was living in Toronto, studying Fine Art at York University. One day a visiting artist named Dana Atchely arrived at school with his Ace Space Show. He had the words “Space is the Connector of All Things” tooled into his fancy leather belt. Indeed, he himself proved to be the connector, for he introduced me to General Idea. This was a time when a psychedelic glow suffused Toronto. Marshall McLuhan had identified the medium which would become our message. Ace Space was staying on campus at The Coach House Press, which was located in an alley behind Rochdale College, the University’s highrise experiment in unstructured education. At the Coach House, poets were operating the linotype machines. Here the artists had truly seized the means of production. Ace Space invited me to visit General Idea, an artists’ group with a studio deep in downtown Toronto, almost at the foot of Yonge Street. Together we climbed three steep flights of steps, past the dust bunnies and up to rooms where the front windows commanded a view of Yonge Street far below. General Idea was a brain trust of three young men with curious names - Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and A. A. Bronson. At the time they were pasting up the layout of the first issue of File Magazine. The cover design mirrored Life Magazine. Inside, its pulpy pages were fairly bursting with gossipy snapshots of artists, and photos from the popular press wrenched out of context and given new significance. Art stars and their burgeoning mythologies were under construction here. File Magazine published, among many other things, the Image Bank Request List, a file of (pseudo)names and address, each naming the subjects of that artist’s obsession. Anna Banana, Ant Farm, Irene Dogmatic and Mr. Peanut became known to me first by this list. Mail art and correspondence of all sorts was encouraged - this was long before the Internet was dreamed of. I learned by careful reading that Image Bank was a project of Michael Morris (Marcel Dot) and Vincent Trasov (Mr. Peanut) of Vancouver. General Idea’s glamourous studio was replete with huge plate glass mirrors on swivelling frames, a resident transvestite chanteuse named Pascal, and plenty of fake palm trees. Ideas, art and media were being interbred with a subversive insouciance by these social-scientist artists. Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol had already demonstrated that art was driven by ideas. Here at General Idea I witnessed the rise of what came to be called Information Technology. New technologies (xerox machine, instant printing, jet travel, video portapak) converged at this time with an unusual political will (Expo 67, Trudeau, Canada Council) which made it easier than ever before for artists to meet one another. Art became democratic. Commercial galleries were no longer necessary. “Parallel” artists-run galleries sprang up in every city. One day over dinner at General Idea I met Michael Morris and Mr. Peanut. These visiting exotics from the west coast were part of a scene there which included living legends like Dr. and Lady Brute and Flakey Rosehips. As a group, they had just purchased a former Knights of Pythias Lodge Hall in Vancouver at Broadway and Main. They named it The Western Front Lodge. Lured by this and much more, I arrived in Vancouver in late May of 1974. Immediately I sought out the Western Front and was invited to take part in The Art Race, to be held the next day at noon: “Glenn Lewis and Gerry Gilbert organized this event, a race along Georgia Street with the artists carrying their art on their backs...HP (Hank Bull and Patrick Ready) unveiled their new Sedan Chair Bottle with Andy Graffiti riding inside; Anna Banana, Dr. Brute and Mr. Peanut of course raced in full regalia. Flakey Rose Hip, dressed as Hitler, presented the winner’s prize on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery.” (from Whispered Art History, Twenty Years of Art at the Western Front by Keith Wallace). Vancouver’s long rainy winter is conducive to winter ceremonials. The Western Front building centres on The Lux, a comfortable auditorium which was even then wired up for recording with the new medium: video tape. There, by the side of the grand piano, all manner of absurdist performances, radio plays and dada cabaret acts unfolded. Visiting artists stagemanaged their dreams before the cameras. In this they were aided by the locals, who were both audience and supporting cast. One of the constant features of these performances was a chorus line of women who performed as backup in many guises. I remember them in tights and “girl tuxedos”, top hats and canes. They might be playing kazoo saxophones, enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame as The Vilettes, or the Cocoanettes. And now, as the Peanettes, they have resurfaced in an art exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Isn’t it ironic that all that (carefully documented) fun and frolic is now being recycled? It is no longer a dada anti-art performance from “the museum without walls”, but has been sent on tour, as considered and curated content within the museum proper. It’s history! Those moments in 1973 and 1974 set the course of my artistic career. From that point on, art was just what we said it was. Art became a collaborative venture. Art was now a way of life - not “art for art’s sake” but something which is lived out in public: “inscribed” on the body politic. It was clear from the moment I met these people - General Idea, Coach House Press, Image Bank, Western Front - that THIS was the art world. To me, and to many others, these people were the most important Canadian artists of my time. Panel Discussion with Barbara Fischer (curator of the General Idea Show), Michael Morris (of Image Bank) and Vincent Trasov (Mr. Peanut) on Thursday, July 14 at 7.30 pm). ___________________________________________ Copyright © 2005Robert Amos Robert Amos is an artist and art writer who lives in Victoria, B.C.. He can be contacted by e-mail and you can view his paintings at www.robertamos.com