General Idea Complete Set Of Five Self Portraits, 1983/1994
Lacquer on vinyl
200 x 160 cm, 225 x 160 cm, 225 x 150 cm, 5 parts
Begun in the mid-1980s, General Idea’s group of self-portraits entitled Three Men Series present the artists as a shared identity and play a central role in their artistic practice. All five self-portraits were constructed as photo montages with additional airbrushed alteration to create a color image.
In these staged photographs, the artists appear disguised as poodles (P is for Poodle, 1983/89), children tucked into one bed (Baby Makes 3, 1984/89), 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.