rock band advertisement. Yet after a few sightings the intent of the message
to tweak Americans’ hearts and minds out of complacency became clear.
Conal admitted his decision to become a postermaker was part of
a “plot to escape from the friendly confines of the art establishment,” which
he joined as a painter after majoring in psychedelic drugs in college during
the late 1960 s. He called his brand of agitprop “infotainment,” and
admitted that the last thing he wanted to do as a nonsanctioned public
artist on social issues was to be deadly serious. “I knew that people on the
street would ignore the humorless message on their way to work in the
morning, and besides, I had a sardonic twist to my sensibility. So taking a
little lesson from advertising, I thought I would just pique people’s interest.
I wasn’t interested in telling them what to think as much as getting them to
think along with me, and giving them a little chuckle, too,” he explained.
Conal’s social activism stems from being a “red-diaper baby” raised
on the “upper left side” of New York City by parents who were labor
organizers. “The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree,” he said. Although
he spent a few years trying to reconcile the often rocky relationship
between art and politics, Conal eventually discovered a process of painting
and postermaking whereby he could publicly express his indignation on
issues such as Iran-Contra, women’s reproductive rights, and censorship.
His second poster titled Women With Teethwas the opposite of
Men With No Lips. “Considering myself something of a feminist, I figured I
should give [women] equal time and image,” he said. The series included
portraits of Nancy Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and
Joan Rivers (whom Conal felt had traded in her alternative culture
birthright for an establishment pedigree); these also sprang up around the
nation thanks to the increasing number of volunteer snipers he and his
friends had recruited. The response was gratifying. “There was a lot of
silent resentment on the streets,” he reasoned, “so when stuff started
showing up in this subversive way, I think it was like a voice for a lot of
people who had been silent. This grass-roots little yelp had become a
chorus.”
The theme of accountability runs through Conal’s work. And
so his third poster titled Speak, which featured Conal’s expressionistic
rendering of Iran-gate principal Colonel Oliver North, was a mammoth
wanted poster. Conal regretted that he did not have enough money to print
two others in the series,Hearand See, featuring portraits of President
Ronald Reagan and his security aide, John Poindexter, but he did succeed
at getting Speakhung in some of the most visible locations around the
country, including site-specific Washington, D.C.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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