Robbie Conal

Fall 2000. West Campus: The images were not pretty. George W. appeared as the mutated luv-child from the deep end of the Howdy Doody/Alfred E. Neuman gene pool, while Al Gore looked ready to hurl the contents of a one-too-many hot-dog stop on the campaign trail. So it wasn't simply an easy-target, anti-Bush sentiment, this guerrilla art, plastered on poles and utility boxes across Austin's prime university neighborhood, it was simply disgusting, and it effectively harnessed the general malaise of that year's national election. It expressed our country's state of disunion and distrust. "Tastes Like Chicken!," emblazoned in a graphic burst over Gore's face, was met with equal vitriol for the Democratic contender's Republican counterpart. Above Bush's puss read, "The Other White Meat!" The faces were grotesque, ashen images in black and white, riddled with age lines and wrinkles. How they got there, who knows? Austin is littered with clandestine art, so I assumed it was locally produced. What a "sniping" neophyte was I.

Sniping is the art of illegal postering. And illegal postering is the realm of many a political artist these days, channeling the disgust inspired by current events and gluttony of our culture, and creating images to counter those wrought by the accepted mass media. The particular work in question was that of iconic anti-icon master Robbie Conal, "America's foremost street artist," according to The Washington Post.

Conal has been slathering the wheat paste with a healthy dose of skewered politicians since the mid-Eighties, when his works began their journey to ubiquity on the streets of L.A. and San Francisco. Since then, the good word has spread -- to New York, Chicago, Houston, even here in Austin -- with the help of an underground railroad of stealthy posterers across the land. Conal's targets, while most frequently and easily Republican in nature, run the gamut across political lines. Martha Stewart is not spared. Neither is Bill Clinton. Monica, herself, appears with a simple mugshot number plate, reading "90210."

Conal visits Austin this week to both appear (along with fellow guerrilla artist Eric Drooker) at Cinematexas for the Parallax View program and BookPeople to promote his new book, Artburn (RDV Books, $19.95, paper), inside of which, readers can enjoy not only the full-color glory of some of Conal's stabbing work, but also commentary from the artist. On his Bush/Gore diptych, he explains, "Gore and Bush selling themselves like USDA prime cuts of meat. And they're both white meat, baby. One's a chicken -- won't take a stand on anything without his pollster's numbers up his ass. The other's a -- well, what is 'the other white meat' anyway? Pork. Where does pork come from? Pigs."

Robbie Conal will be at Cinematexas' Parallax View (Flawn Center, UT campus) on Saturday, Sept. 20, at 1pm, and at BookPeople later that day at 7pm.