AA Bronson

AA Bronson (born Michael Tims in Vancouver in 1946) is an artist.

He was a founding member of the artists' group General Idea, was president and director of Printed Matter, Inc., and started the NY Art Book Fair and the LA Art Book Fair.

Tims' father was an Air Force officer, and as a result, the family moved often; Tims spent his childhood in various places across Canada.

He was an avid reader as a child, and it was through his reading habits that he explored his interest in art, architecture, spirituality and the occult, which would remain significant touchstones throughout his life and career, especially in his post-General Idea solo career.

He attended the University of Manitoba as an architecture student in the mid-1960s.

He met Ron Gabe (aka Felix Partz) at the University of Manitoba.

While at architecture school, he came to be interested in and involved with theories of radical education and communes.

His interest in and experience with alternate methods of education began at the age of 12, where his primary school experimented with a form of self-directed learning.

He, along with a group of fellow U of Manitoba students, dropped out to form a commune, whose activities included a free press (called "The Loving Couch Press") and a free school (called "The School").

It was via his activities with the Loving Couch Press that Bronson came into contact with other underground presses.

This, in turn, exposed him to the Situationist International and Fluxus, which would have a significant impact on the ideas and methods pursued as part of General Idea.

In the late 1960s, Bronson trained as a facilitator in group-process for communes and cooperative communities while apprenticing with a psychologist at the University of Regina.

In his role as an apprentice, he travelled across Canada, including to Simon Fraser University.

At Simon Fraser, he met Brian Carpenter, who deepened his exposure to radical communication theories.

He also encountered the InterMedia artist collective, and Slobodan Saia-Levy (aka Jorge Zontal).

In 1969, Bronson's involvement in communes and radical education theories and practices took him to Toronto, to investigate the Rochdale College experiment.

It was through some of the members of Rochdale College that Bronson deepened his friendships with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal (each having arrived in Toronto for different reasons).

They, along with several others, became involved in the countercultural performance and "happenings" scene that centered around Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille.

Through Theatre Passe Muraille, Bronson apprenticed with Coach House Press (he also did graphic design for Passe Muraille).

The General Idea artists group, initially a loose collective of five to seven people, was founded in 1969 by Bronson, Jorge Zontal and Felix Partz, Partz's then-girlfriend Mimi Paige, and Granada Gazelle (a.k.a. Granada Venne or Sharon Venne).

Among the group's various activities, The trio founded FILE Megazine, a visual magazine, which they edited and published from 1972 until 1989.

In 1974 they founded Art Metropole, an international publisher, distributor and archive of artists' books, video and multiples, which they conceived as an extension of the self-mythologization of General Idea.

AA Bronson was the director of Art Metropole from 1974 through 1984, and again from 1996 through 1998.

While caring for friends coping with their AIDS-related illnesses, Bronson began to participate in Body Electric (and related) therapeutic massage and healing workshops and seminars in California (he partook in the first of such seminars in 1989).

His initial motivation for this was to become a midwife to the dying.

Over the course of the next eleven years, he would return to California to continue to take part in, and deepen his knowledge of, alternative healing and therapeutic bodywork practices.

After the deaths of Partz and Zontal, an aspect of Bronson's grief manifested as a creative crisis.

The three worked and lived together for 25 years, until their collaboration was terminated with the death of both Zontal and Partz in 1994.

General Idea continues to exhibit internationally in private galleries and museums, as well as undertaking countless temporary public art projects around the world.

Bronson has been working independently since that time.

He is currently represented by Esther Schipper, Berlin and Maureen Paley, London.

Bronson's solo artwork has dealt with trauma, loss, death and healing.

His first works are, in fact, elegies both to his General Idea partners and his own identity as part of the group: a deathbed portrait of Felix Partz (Felix, June 5, 1994, 1994–99), a triptych of Zontal shortly before his death (Jorge, February 3, 1994, 2000) and a full-body nude self-portrait in the shape of a coffin (AA Bronson, August 22, 2000, 2000).

He began working professionally as a healer initially out of personal calling, and this professional identity as a healer was soon integrated into his artistic identity.

Bronson has said that he approached his identity as a healer in the same way that General Idea approached their identities as artists: the word was so overused, it had lost any particular meaning and significance, and so he was free both to assume the 'drag' of a healer, and consequently, to invest the word with his own meaning.

The first expression of his healing practice as an artistic performance emerged at a solo show at the Frederic Giroux gallery in Paris in 2003.

His healing practice garnered significant attention in the press due to his inclusion of an anal massage technique, a practice he learned through a teacher Bronson met during his extensive therapeutic massage schooling in California.

In 2004, Bronson began working at Printed Matter as its director.

Through his involvement in Printed Matter, he founded the NY Art Book Fair in 2005 (which in turn birthed the LA Art Book Fair).

The annual NY Art Book Fair, which hosts over 200 independent presses, booksellers, antiquarian dealers, artists and publishers from twenty countries.