Robbie Conal

Robbie Conal, Darth Condi (death grip).

    Skeletons—they are a brand new for me. In an art gallery, no less. It’s been a while.
I needed a break from 20 years of ugly old heads and nasty little puns on the mean streets.
Here’s the deal: During the Black Plague in Europe, Hans Holbein the Younger did a series of 41 woodcuts of skeletons happily dragging the dead (half the population) off of the stinking, putrid streets: The Dance of Death. I got to thinking that Dubya’s gang of war (against humanity) criminals were doing that same dance—Dubya sending out Darth Condi, stomping all over Europe, thuggin’ for democracy and Skull Jugglin Rummy shipping his (our) unprepared boys and girls out to do The Dance of Death all over the world. Or, in Big Dick’s terms, “spreading democracy” and declaring a “permanent war on terror” to keep us safe, substituting domestic surveillance for civil liberties to keep us free. Depending on Lil’ Stinker, KKKarl Rove to dirty trick the electorate into buying it.
    And they seemed so pleased with themselves.
    Fuck them.
    I live in Los Angeles. You draw skeletons here, you gotta honor Jose Guadalupe Posada.             CALAVERAS, pinche gringo culero!
    No problemo, Ese!
    So, skeletal Dubya and Condi are doing the Apocalypso Facto Tango (she leads). Dubya’s neo-con men are leading us, happily, to the Apocalypse.
What else is new?
    I was a 47th generation abstract expressionist—but who’s counting?—until 1980.
    Then three things changed my life in art.
    Ronald Reagan was elected president.
    That pissed me off.
    My girlfriend at the time, a Renaissance art historian, was writing her thesis in Rome.
    She dragged me over the water and stood me in front of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.
    PORCO DIO!
    Figurative art about human suffering. That’s deep.
    I thought maybe I should try it.
    Then there was encroaching adulthood.
    Nasty.
    So, I came around to doing satirical portraits of ugly old white men (and, yes, some women, Condi! Hillary!) in suits and ties (the usual suspects plus Rudy Giuliani—oh, get over it!), who have way too much power and abuse it in the name of representative democracy, or a higher power, like global capitalism (Bill Gates) or God (Jerry Falwell, LA’s own Cardinal Mahoney). Their God.
    (This is, of course, just my opinion.)
    As soon as I stripped my art down to almost nothing but bad guys and a nasty little pun or two, I realized I was making art about public issues that the public—regular peeps with jobs or out pounding the pavement all day looking for jobs—would probably never see. I love the art world and all, but it’s hard to squeeze into wid dem skinny hours: Tuesday-Saturday, noon to six—kinda like designer jeans.
    So, I made posters and hit the streets. Guerrilla street posters: sadly, the most direct, unmediated form of public expression available to scruffy, arty types who want to reach even the peeps without laptops.
    Now, where was I?
    Oh yeah, back on the streets again.
    With the help of a fantastic volunteer guerrilla non-army of club slime, my shit gets up in the middle of the night—which is slightly illegal. I like to pretend it’s a minor form of civil disobedience. Anyway, getting busted for exercising your right to free political speech is educational.
    Doing a little jail time is another educational experience. How else are we really going to learn about our Federal, State and Municipal Judicial systems? What do John Mitchell, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft and Albert Gonzales have in common?
    In New York—my old hood—two nights after the second bombing of Baghdad, I got busted with five friends for putting up posters of Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and MLK Jr—we went directly to jail.
The only really cool thing about non-sanctioned public art is: To be in on the joke, the audience don’t need no stinkin’ conglomerate media embedded whores, no Viacom, no General Electric, no Disney. No Fox News, no internet drudge report.
It’s a good thing I’m not a hater.