In late 2018, deep in the slough and moral abyss of the Trump administration, I uttered on this blog a question from the heart: "Where is all the political art?" I felt that the nation was passing through such an ugly and unprecedented chapter that it demanded visual representation. More specifically: it needed someone who could summon on canvas the depth of rage and disgust I felt for the people then in power.
Where was our Otto Dix to depict the carnivalesque depravity of the White House staff? Where was the Goya to depict with savage sarcasm the violence and injustice of the Trump presidency? Where was our Guernica for the war in Yemen, where U.S. and Saudi bombs are raining down on civilians from the skies? Where is our Francis Bacon to capture the mixture of horror and vulgarity and mediocrity all rolled into one that Trump himself represented?
Lacking any artistic examples of the sort I craved, I turned to making such canvases myself. The result was abysmal as art—mere doodles, really. But it seemed to me no one else was producing the sort of visual representations that our era demanded, so I made my own effort. When Trump came out with some particularly disgusting demagogic remark about executing people for drug crimes in 2019, for instance, I depicted him seated, open-mouthed, and dripping with corpse-like gruesomeness in my best Francis Bacon imitation.
I wished that someone more talented than I would draw the same thing. But since no one else seemed to be doing it, I did my best to rise to the challenge.
But then, years later, an illustration caught my eye. I happened to be watching Robert Altman's 1992 Hollywood satire, The Player. During one scene of the altercation between the protagonist and the disgruntled writer he ends up killing, I saw in the background on a wall an intriguing political poster. It depicted the grimacing face of George H.W. Bush rendered in a dripping, zombie-like style reminiscent of Francis Bacon. Above his head ran the legend: "It Can't Happen Here."
I paused the film to google who created this image. Lo and behold, it turns out the same artist has been doing similar illustrations for decades of our most reprehensible national figures. And he has certainly not spared the Trump administration. There they all are—Trump, Miller, Rudy, the whole crooked gang. And among his artistic influences is none other than Francis Bacon. This artist's name is Robbie Conal, and you can find more of his work here.
So it turns out that all this time, beyond my awareness, someone was in fact drawing Bacon-esque zombie depictions of Trump and his gang. And not only that, they were illustrations with overt political messages, which captured in a way mere words often fail to do the genuine disgust and contempt one feels for these individuals—their vulgarity, cynicism, and loathsomeness—the way they abuse strength and advantage to harm the least powerful. Here it all was; if only I had known where to look!
As so I breathe relief. It was not all up to me! Allies and friends were working in parallel all along to give us the political art we need and deserve. My hat goes off therefore to Robbie Conal—a salute and a hymn of praise!
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