The Art and Political Science of Robbie Conal

By: Danny Klein | Alan Shaffer | March 19, 2008 | Art

Robbie Conal

DK: What was on the note?

RC: “Bubbelah: After school, go to any museum of your choice. Go to any museum you want. Come back by 6:30 for dinner. Love and Solidarity, Mom and Dad”

DK: And what age was this?

RC: I was 8 — 8 and 9.

DK: You eventually attended New York’s High School of Music and Art, then on to a stint at Brooklyn College and ultimately Stanford University. Was there a particular spark that ignited your artistic voice?

RC: Of course. It’s almost like a tipping point, a threshold, and once you snap, you know. It was really in 1980 … when Reagan got elected. And people know this: Anybody who knows me that long, whether we’re still friends or not, knows that [Reagan] started when he was governor of California, basically deconstructing health, education and welfare federal programs.

DK:  The land of Proposition 13...

RC: Yeah, and also he took care of the Board of Regents, he and the Board of Regents took care of the best university public school system in the country, and basically started dismantling it. A couple of Republican governors after him finished the job, or tried to. And then there’s Proposition 13 and (Howard) Jarvis and all that. But when he became president and started in with that stuff, like, his concept of government was really not about serving the citizenry, it was really more like what we have now. His constituents were corporations. CORPORATIONS HAPPEN TO BE PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES, WHICH IS A VERY IMPORTANT POINT. THEY ARE LEGALLY PEOPLE, BUT THEY ARE VERY BIG PEOPLE, and that just flipped me out.

DK: And these people were your first works at trying to paint pop culture and politics, your first stab?

RC: Yeah, and the thing is, even in San Francisco and what happened there, and my background in sociology and cross-cultural anthropology, I knew that what I was interested in was, first of all, my anger about abuses of power by [people who are] supposedly our representatives, democratically-elected. They are abusing their powers, and they aren’t taking care of us. In fact, they’re war criminals, in a way, if you’re talking about the Vietnam War and afterwards, [with] the Reagan administration. And then also the propaganda of popular culture, [that] mythology of the American way, [and] how those two things, when they coincide, or when they bang into each other — what’s the torque? What’s the dynamic there that makes for such egregious political policy? I knew that there was a connection because I grew up in the ’50s. Father Knows Best, that’s just total propaganda. Come on, man. Just think about it for more than a minute — the title.

DK: You refer to Leon Golub as your favorite artist.  How did he shape your work?

If you’re talking about popular culture, it has to appeal to a lot of people, or a very small group of people with a lot of money. So, how does that work, and what’s the relationship between Jesse Helms and the art world? Not good. But they influenced each other and there’s some friction there, and what’s the disjunction? My idea was to investigate the little cracks in the monolith. We’re not a monolithic culture, and there are wonderful people everywhere, in every town in the United States, and there’s so much talent. Leon Golub is the guy who helped me with this, and his wife, Nancy Sparrow. They said get rid of all your reactions to your feelings about this, and take all your feelings and jam them into representations of whomever you think is responsible. Take all the power you have and the passion you have and put it into the face of whatever it is. POINT YOUR FINGER. If you think, as an artist, what you really care about are abuses of power and the guys who have misrepresented democracy, who is it? PAINT THAT PERSON.

DK:  Your work exploded onto the scene during the Reagan administration, continuing throughout the Clinton and Bush years. The language you use — your copywriting, if you will — is as profound as the images that you paint and draw. When did that click, your bold copywriting element?

RC: Well, it comes from, again, being an arty kid in this incredible matrix in Manhattan — talking street talk, being street. So, I come from Marxist intellectuals, but Marxist intellectuals who didn’t just sit and study it. My father’s running around like crazy being a union organizer, being shot at and shit. He was a very charismatic speaker; he could talk some smack. He had to talk to some working-class people, people who were working in factories and mines, and he loved people. They’re wonderful. And the mix is so profound, you get the sculptural stew where different cultures, like Spanglish, or American slang, jazz, colloquial jazz, expressions like “cool” and “hip,” and language that comes out of their lives. English is so flexible in that way. A language like Yiddish, which is basically a counterattack on German, basically only exists to annoy Germans, and does very well at that, but it’s a very living language — their combinations — and that’s what’s exciting to me. I threw everything out of my art, it’s very reductive, but I added an element from another box and one of the things, like Luca Turin, who’s a great biochemist and also a quantum physicist. There’s a book about him that’s just a killer, like everything I ever wanted to know, called The Emperor of Scent. I love that book, and I love him because he said that we need better metaphors. To learn stuff, to make new products and to do really good science or art, you need better metaphors. And that’s so true in politics, that’s so true in art, that’s so true in music. SO WITH ART I JUST TOOK WHAT I THOUGHT WAS, LIKE, THE MOST DYNAMIC, MOST SUBVERSIVE FORM OF EXPRESSION THAT I HAD EVER BEEN EXPOSED TO, WHICH WAS COLLOQUIAL AMERICAN ENGLISH, and because of the way I grew up, my way of thinking was basically everything’s funny, or “laugh to keep from crying,” which is a cultural thing. It’s a language that has a little bit of anger in it. It takes official American English and turns it upside down, shakes it for loose change.

DK: Then, after over two decades, you suddenly shift gears away from satire with a work called, “Watching, Waiting, Dreaming,” featuring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama and Gandhi. What caused that shift?

RC: That’s a good question. Really, I get up in the morning, read two or three newspapers, drink some coffee, feed the cats, go into the studio and I’ve got all these bad guys all the time. Oh, there’s George Bus, and there’s the usual suspects. I live with them every day and they get me down. It’s cathartic for me because I could throw paint at them or make fun of them in my way, but still, it’s a negative form. Satire is a critical, negative form that is leavened by humor — that’s the sugar that makes the pill go down, laughing to keep from crying, being a wise guy. I’m not cynical. I’m incredibly grateful to have this public forum that has any kind of audience at all and that has any resonance with the public. That’s very rare for an artist to have and I appreciate it. But also, you can’t run around the streets like a maniac doing this. It’s a total-loss operation, for so many years, without actually being an optimist. It sounds weird. People say, “What do you believe in? Are there any politicians you actually like?” And that’s a hard one for me. I like Obama. It’s been a long time. Hello, we’re back! And you’re talking about a throwback to the ’60s and ’70s; you’re talking about Martin Luther King, a kind of little bit of hope for a more citizenry-based form of representation. And maybe he will actually represent people as opposed to business. There’s a chance. You can see a little glimmer there. But in terms of belief, I don’t believe in Obama. I believe in my wife. Me and Obama? We’re not that close.

DK: Have you ever met him?

RC: No. I’ve read a lot of books though, not by him, but you read a lot of books about politicians and what happens in the transition between sniping at power and becoming institutional power. I’m wary about all that, but I do believe in people. I think the American people are fantastic. The structure of our government is such that it’s designed to frustrate the majority of the people in terms of being a representative democracy. I don’t think it was really so hypocritical when the Constitution was written, because there was no doubt that the government was designed to represent male white landowners, that’s it. Democracy was for them. It was democracy for an elite. And that’s truly built into our Constitution, so I’m not surprised when representative democracy isn’t inclusive. That’s what the Electoral College is about, that’s what super delegates are about — it’s all checks and balances against the rabble actually taking over. Heaven forbid that the popular vote should be the be all and end all. We have our ways of mitigating that kind of crass democracy. That hurts us in terms of actually having a government that represents the majority’s needs, that serves the needs and desires of the majority of people in the United States. And two parties are not enough. You gotta fight for your right to party. That’s the thing that bothers me most with our electoral system, and most people don’t think that their vote counts. When the election gets stolen, it adds to that feeling. It’s a feeling of helplessness. The electoral process is not going to bring us change or democracy; we’re fucked. But when 9/11 happened, it was such a terrible thing and I felt strongly about it. But then OUR GOVERNMENT’S REACTION TO IT WAS BASICALLY A COWBOY REVENGE FANTASY not to mention an opportunistic …

DK: Yes, fossil fuel…

RC: Fossils getting their fuel; an opportunistic chance for fossils to get their fuel. That’s a good line. I was just horrified. Embarrassment is not even in the ballpark. It’s like “Oh, my God.” It’s embarrassing as a human being. Isn’t there some other way? Why do we always do this? First of all, revenge, overreacting — it’s almost like the American way. But what was going through my mind when it comes to 9/11, ISN’T THERE SOME OTHER WAY TO MAKE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGE ASIDE FROM BOMBING THE SHIT OUT OF PEOPLE? I’d been doing bad guys for a long time and just karmically for myself and for the United States’ relationship to the rest of the world, wouldn’t it be cool if Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King were all on the streets looking at us going, “What are you thinking? Think again. Try another box. THINK ABOUT OTHER WAYS TO RELATE TO OTHER HUMAN BEINGS and change their minds about issues that are important.” And I was terrified. I knew that I had developed an adversarial portraiture to make fun of bad guys to get under their skin and get my torque, my political torque, and turn that into a celebratory portraiture. I knew that I could make it work because basically it’s like German expressionism: You use distortionism for emotional effect or expressive effect. Painting portraits, if nothing else, it’s really soulful. You spend way too much time with the image, and if you are really paying attention, it’s very intimate. And so you don’t really want to be that intimate with the character that I paint, but I also felt a responsibility, like I better not fuck up. I want to make them look good, but I don’t want to make them look like they are ready for the prom. I want to express …

DK: The humanity?

RC: Humanity, yes, that’s exactly it, and that it’s international, it’s global. HUMANITY MEANS EVERYBODY, YOU KNOW?  NOT JUST YOUR GOLF PARTNER.  I started making these big paintings at my friend [legendary photographer] Al Shaffer’s studio. I did Gandhi at Al’s in the dark. And I’m peeing my pants. It was hard and I’m like “I don’t know about this, I just don’t know about this.” And I’m in new territory, and you want that, but you also got a little bit at stake here, ’cause I like this guy. It’s supposed to come out good. And my wife, Deborah Ross, finally came. I didn’t know she was coming, but she looks at it and I hear her gasping. She saw Gandhi and she just said, “Wow. I’ve never seen anything like that out of you.” And I said, “Is that a good thing?” And she says, “Not bad.” But she was crying. She was crying and I don’t like to make a person I love cry unless it’s humanity. It’s almost like self-medicating to do this repair to some of my karmic damage and commune with people who I actually thought had humanity’s interest at heart.

(Deborah Ross joins the conversation)
Deborah Ross: It took my breath away. I just walked in there and it was just like … [gasps]! I took a look at it and I couldn’t breathe. I actually do have an idea about how you turned your derogatory attack painting style into this positive spin that works. That actually just totally surprised me and everybody else, too, who saw them because you would not expect that to work in the way that it did. But I think it is just the love and the way you paint. The care and the love came straight through.

RC: I’m so un-commercial; it’s pathetic. But I know how the cultural economy works, and I knew that sooner or later if I got enough of these up, the media, like you guys, would find me and it’s kind of like one of the things about postering at night aside from minor civil disobedience, it’s a great date. Running around — it’s sexy shit if you’re so inclined and it’s mischievous. It’s not terribly malicious. People say, “Well how effective do you think it is?” And I say, “That’s the wrong question, ’cause I’m not trying to change people’s minds with it. I don’t have any ambitions.”

Robbie Conal

DK: But maybe you are opening minds with it.

RC: But just to get people to think along with me. IF I CAN TICKLE PEOPLE INTO THINKING ALONG WITH ME ABOUT ISSUES, just sort of think about it a little, you know, like, “What the hell is that doing there?” Then that’s fine, that’s enough, ’cause I’m just expressing myself, and how I feel in public. This is my way of getting to the most people I can get to considering my lowly status in life without having a contract with Clive Davis or a book deal or I don’t know — what is the equivalent? — without being represented by Endeavor.

DK: You created a tribute portrait of Barack Obama titled Sea Change specifically for the cover of this month’s issue of Malibu Magazine. Obama represents something so much larger than his basic candidacy – beyond his views, his platform and his party.  What is it about him specifically that motivates you?

RC: I was talking to literary agent Phoebe Larmore about Obama. She said, “Obama, he is kind of a throwback, a reconnection to social grass roots movements in America that were very hopeful, that period where we felt that if people worked together on a grassroots level, they could make their neighborhoods better, make a better life for people who didn’t have all the economic advantages for working class people.” And she just said, “He’s just got that feeling. That it’s another chance. Maybe we have another chance and we haven’t seen that in a long time.” And I agree with her. He’s bringing us a little something that we remember, and it’s a promise that was not exactly delivered. And of course that could happen again, but it’s more like for people of my generation, a second chance, the possibility of a second chance, and that puts a little twinkle in my eye. And I think I’m not alone.

Robbie Conal’s poster army’s next “Get Up” will be in New Orleans with a poster campaign (“Patriot Inaction” & “Emission Accomplished”) to raise awareness of the enduring post-Katrina plight. Local krewes will meet and organize at the Jazz & Heritage Music Festival (April 30 – May 4).  His work will also be featured at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica. The “25-Year Survey Exhibit of Robbie Conal’s Original Paintings and Drawings” show will launch with an opening party on Oct. 18 from 6 p.m. to midnight (with a live band, food and drink). Track 16 Gallery is located at Bergamot Station 2525 Michigan Avenue, Bldg C-1, in Santa Monica. The exhibit continues through November. For info, call (310) 264-4678. Robbie’s full line of art, books, stickers and merchandise can be viewed and purchased online at http://www.robbieconal.com.  To view clips of Deborah Ross’ award-winning title design sequences for feature films and television, visit her site at http://www.drfilmdesign.com. To see more of Alan Shaffer’s legendary photography, visit http://www.shafferphoto.com.

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