‘Anti-Christo’ of Art Wins Followers in O.C.

Guerrilla artist Robbie Conal has an unusual career goal: to become “the Anti-Christo.”

Allluding to Bulgarian-born conceptual artist Christo, who placed hundreds of huge umbrellas along the Golden State Freeway near Gorman as well as in Japan in October, Conal said if he could be Christo’s “evil twin . . . I’d take a giant condom and cover the Washington Monument, just to remind our leaders to practice safe cultural imperialism.”

That sort of remark is quintessential Conal, who has satirized several of the country’s political leaders with posters tacked up along the streets of Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Chicago and other cities. Having attained national notoriety with his potshots at Presidents Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George Bush and other public figures, Conal at last pierced “the heart of Reagan Country” with his first Orange County appearance Tuesday for a slide lecture at Cal State Fullerton.

How did it go over?

Granted, his audience was largely art students from the university. But the artist already has locals lining up to join his vast crew of volunteers who steal into the night to plaster his biting, humorous broadsides on telephone poles and other surfaces.

“I’m going to ask him if I can help him network in Orange County,” said Christen Wudzke, a Cal State Fullerton junior majoring in art. Wudzke was waiting with several others after the lecture to plunk down $10 for one of the artist’s signed posters.

“Yeah, I’m interested” in volunteering, “my own work is very political in nature,” said graduate art student Karena Massengill.

Since 1986, the 47-year-old Los Angeles resident and his midnight marauders have put up close to 100,000 unauthorized posters.

In addition to various presidents, his portraits have taken aim at former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, Secretary of State James A. Baker III, televangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

His 1988 poster of Bush bears the caption “IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE,” with the word “HERE” painted over the president’s forehead, a reference to Bush’s mental prowess, he says. The phrase “FALSE PROFIT” appears beneath the Bakkers’ smiling visages.

Gates’ likeness, which surfaced during the furor over the beating of Rodney G. King earlier this year, superimposes a bull’s-eye on the police chief’s chest. Its caption quotes Gates’ controversial comment “CASUAL DRUG USERS OUGHT TO BE TAKEN OUT AND SHOT,” with the word SHOT crossed out and replaced with BEATEN.

“I pick on these people because they are really emblems of abuses of power,” Conal said. “In our system of representative democracy, it’s our job to hold people accountable.”

Notwithstanding a few such sober comments, Conal, wearing jeans, a black T-shirt and running shoes, kept the 100-plus members of his audience laughing with the same sort of wry humor that pervades his “unsanctioned public art.”

He described one encounter with Washington, D.C., police who reacted differently from most of the other “large men in blue uniforms” who have detained--but never arrested--him, he said. Pasting up the Bakker posters, police in the nation’s capital made him take down everything he and his helpers had put up. Shortly after, however, a pair of officers drove by and said, “ ‘Hey, that’s Jim and Tammy--can we have a couple of those with no glue, to go?’ ” Conal said.

Conal, who has a master of fine arts degree from Stanford University, began in the mid-1980s painting “nasty little black-and-white portraits of ugly old men in suits and ties.” (He reproduces his posters from oil or charcoal portraits he creates.)

Realizing he was making art that addressed social and public issues, he took to the streets to reach “the public with a capital P “ and go beyond the elite crowd that frequents art galleries and museums.

His first poster bore the caption “MEN WITH NO LIPS” and pictured Reagan and his chief of staff Donald T. Regan, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and Secretary of State Baker all painted with tightly pursed lips to reflect “their unforthcomingness with the American public,” Conal said.

While he was papering a construction site on La Cienega Boulevard with the posters in 1986, a couple of kids roared by in a Mustang, Conal said, “and yelled out ‘Men With No Lips!--Where are they playing?’ I said, ‘They’ve been playing the White House for the last six years.’ ”

Conal has had his detractors--Gates’ supporters among them--and has been the focus of controversy. In 1988, officials at the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Maintenance threatened to prosecute him for violating graffiti laws. The city billed Conal $1,300 for the cost of removing his posters from traffic signal boxes and other public-utility mechanisms.

Last year, an advertising company demanded that a giant anti-censorship piece created and paid for by Conal be removed from a billboard the company owned in West Hollywood.

The billboard depicted Sen. Helms and the words “ARTIFICIAL ART OFFICIAL.” The senator, who spearheaded efforts to impose content restrictions on federally funded art, was shown with his head superimposed over an artist’s palate, its thumb hold smack in the middle of his forehead. The work was removed for a day, then reinstated after an outcry from the area’s art community.

On the other hand, Conal recently experienced a turnaround in his relations with Los Angeles city officials. In August, the city’s Cultural Affairs Department awarded him a $10,000 grant, which he used to create a 14-by-48 foot diptych addressing the Iran-Contra affair and featuring then-Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North. He’s also moving up in the art world: He opened his first New York one-person show last month at the Jayne H. Baum Gallery.

How soon Orange County might see Conal’s work firsthand is unclear.

His most recent poster features a vapidly grinning portrait of Vice President Dan Quayle. “DAMAGE” is written across Quayle’s forehead, and “CONTROL” across his mouth.

It was time that “Dan got his own poster,” Conal said. “We’ll be putting this up around, and if (we) have any volunteers in Orange County, maybe this is the most appropriate” image for a first venture into the county, he said.