Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

  • Home
  • Riot Material Magazine
    • About Riot Material
    • Entering The Mind
    • Contact
    • Masthead
    • Categories >
      • Art
      • Artist
      • Books
      • Cinema Disordinaire
      • Film
      • Interview
      • Jazz
      • Riot Sounds
      • Thought
      • More   >
        • Architecture
        • Image
        • Records
        • The Line
        • The New Word
        • That Evening Sun
        • The Natural World
        • Video
  • Art
    • Art Reviews
  • Books
    • Book Reviews
  • Film
    • Film Reviews
  • Records
    • Jazz Reviews
    • All Reviews
  • Riot Sounds
  • Cinema Disordinaire
    • Riot Cinema

Humor and Horror: A Tale of Two Satirists

November 2, 2018 By Lorraine Heitzman

IndigNATION: Political Drawings by Jim Carrey, 2016-2018, Maccarone, Los Angeles (through December 1, 2018)                                                             
Robbie Conal: Cabinet of Horrors, Track 16, Los Angeles (through December 10, 2018)           
Reviewed By Lorraine Heitzman

There are two political shows capturing the attention of Angelenos now, besides, of course, the very real drama playing out in Washington. IndigNATION: Political Drawings by Jim Carrey at the Maccarone Gallery is a series of political cartoons as freewheeling and expressive as Carrey himself, while Robbie Conal: Cabinet of Horrors at Track 16 continues the artist’s well-known practice of skewering those in power in brutal, satiric portraits. Both shows are entertaining and provocative in their use of humor to depict harsh realities. Like Edel Rodriguez, whose graphic and clever depictions of Trump have attained an international following, and the innumerable artists who feel compelled to express their political views, Carrey and Conal are calling attention to what they see as the hypocrisies stemming from the current administration. If art has become the new, preferred method of political persuasion, bring it on.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, left, Donald Trump, center, and Trump aide Stephen Miller, right, are depicted in three of Jim Carrey’s political cartoons.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, left, Donald Trump, center, and Trump aide Stephen Miller, right. All Carrey images courtesy of Jim Carrey and Maccarone.

Jim Carrey, who is best known for his work as a comic actor, found the subject for these drawings only recently, although he claims to have been interested in drawing comics from an early age. It comes as a bit of a shock, therefore, to see the sheer number of cartoons on display in Maccarone’s vast space in Boyle Heights. The show consists of 108 drawings made over the past two years with the most recent one completed less than two weeks prior to the show’s opening. The collection of small drawings are literally ripped from his sketchbook and chronicle not only our turbulent times but also the personal distress, the cost of today’s political climate upon the individual. Each is dated and accompanied by a title, a commentary, and in some cases, a plea for voter participation.  Underlying most of the work is a barely stifled outrage. The outliers are a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. and one of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. A memorial and homage, respectively, they are in direct contrast to his portraits of Sarah Sanders, Rudy Giuliani, and Trump, and manage to indict the current administration by their solemn presence alone.

Jim Carrey, I Scream You Scream Will We Ever Stop Screaming
I Scream You Scream Will We Ever Stop Screaming
Jim Carrey, Father's Day
Little Stephen Miller
Jim Carrey, Giuliani Doesn’t Bleach the Bottom Teeth
Giuliani Doesn’t Bleach the Bottom Teeth

With so many drawings on display, it is perhaps inevitable that certain cartoons are more successful than others, and a little editing would have helped the show a lot. Plenty of his drawings depend upon their captions, but the best ones convey his outrage and despair without the text. The drawings that stand on their own merits do more than illustrate his message; rather, the message is fully embedded in the drawing. They work in the same way all good art does; they engage the viewer while revealing some truth about their subject. Some drawings are rollicking send-ups, reminiscent of Robert Colescott, Red Grooms, or even Jack Davis (of Mad Magazine fame), and share the same exuberance and knack for mimicry that characterizes Carrey’s acting.  Others, less nuanced cartoons have a simplicity that may favor Twitter, but suffer in a gallery setting.

Jim Carrey, Marco Rubio

Rubio’s Hands

A particularly strong drawing, Rubio’s Hands, February 24, 2018 depicts the grinning Senator with bloodied hands held, palms facing out. The caption reads, “Rubio’s agenda is clear. Keep taking millions from the NRA and wash the blood of innocent children off his hands.  Apparently $3.3 million is the price of this politician’s soul.”  This is a visceral, iconic image and Carrey pulls it off with an active, but uncomplicated image of frenetic marks, symbolic gestures and accusatory text. The pose might suggest the act of surrender, or even the stigmata, but Carrey uses it to prove the politician’s guilt.

Jim Carrey, The Great Spewdini
The Great Spewdini
Jim Carrey, The Wicked Witch of the West Wing
The Wicked Witch of the West Wing
Jim Carrey, Stage 4 America
Stage 4 America

In The Great Spewdini, the caption reads, “Manafort, GUILTY! Cohen, GUILTY! Flynn, GUILTY! Gates, GUILTY! What’s happening to All the Best People? “Ladies and Gentlemen!  Children of all ages! Can the Great Spewdini spew enough lies to escape the straight-jacket of his un-Presidented criminality?” Carrey has posed Trump as Harry Houdini, suspended upside down from a flagpole, arms constrained in a straightjacket, high above Times Square. Below him, a billboard for Death of a Salesman can be seen on a rooftop. With his hairpiece ready to fly off and his long, red tie blowing in the wind, Trump is clearly struggling. The concept of an escape artist is an apt one to convey the idea of a huckster caught up in his lies and Carrey exploits the comparison in a Jack Kirby inspired composition. The colorful, energetic and complex composition is effective, a case where his ambitious layout is rewarded.

Jim Carrey, Fifty Shades of Decay
Fifty Shades of Decay
Jim Carrey, Pucker Up
Pucker Up

Carrey posts his cartoons on his Twitter feed (he has a following of 18.2 million as of this writing). In this era of social media when virtually everybody has a platform and nobody has a voice, Carrey’s celebrity insures that his own distinctive message is heard, one that is filled with the same passion and humor that his fans already appreciate.  

♦

Robbie Conal's Cabinet of Horrors, Installation view

Robbie Conal’s Cabinet of Horrors, Installation view. All Conal images courtesy of Robbie Conal and Track 16.

Over at Track 16, Robbie Conal has lined the gallery with a series of brutal, eviscerating, and yes, humorous paintings of contemporary political figures. Each painting is configured in the same format: a simply posed, black and white portrait set against a solid backdrop. They possess the austerity of a wanted poster, but one that has a title written in dripping blood and is hanging in a gilded frame, hinting at both opulence and decay. The effect is part portrait gallery, part haunted house.


The Trumps

Under the ghoulish title, Cabinet of Horrors, there is little room to doubt where Conal stands on the political spectrum. A self-described red diaper baby, Conal grew up in New York City, on the “upper-left side,” as he refers to it. His parents were both union organizers and his father was harassed and blacklisted during the heyday of McCarthy’s House of Un-American Activities Committee. His mother regularly left him afterschool notes signed, “in love and solidarity.” Is it any wonder that Conal found a way to merge his interest in art with his political views? 

Robbie Conal: Michael Flynn
Michael Flynn
Robbie Conal: Mike Pence
Mike Pence
Robbie Conal: Jeff Sessions
Jeff Sessions

His early love of abstract expressionism, forged in New York in the sixties, never really left him. His street art always begins with an oil painting, one that is textural and emotional. While the abstract expressionists may have been his first painting heroes, he was also influenced by the social critics, Daumier, Goya, Posada and especially by Picasso’s Guernica, which he visited often during its residency at The Museum of Modern Art. The impetus to make posters began in 1986 with his painting series, Men With No Lips that included portraits of President Ronald Reagan and three members of his Cabinet: Casper Weinberger, Donald Regan and James Baker. Women With Teeth came next featuring Nancy Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and others.  Teetering between comedy and tragedy, his larger than life-sized portraits of people in power, particularly those believed to abuse their power, landed a visceral punch.

Wanting a larger and more diverse audience than the one found in art galleries, Conal began using guerilla tactics to plaster his posters on the streets of Los Angeles, followed by New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Houston. The Cabinet of Horrors features the men and women of the Trump administration.  The artist, who is now 74, says he has never been busier and jokingly refers to this time as his “late period.”  He regrets that circumstances have provided so many people to satirize, but he is driven to do so and finds it cathartic.

Robbie Conal: Kellyanne Conway
Kellyanne Conway
Robbie Conal: Michael Cohen
Michael Cohen
Robbie Conal, Melania Trump
Melania Trump

Experiencing Conal’s original artwork in a gallery is a very different experience than coming across one of his posters on the street.  Firstly, there is the paint.  Conal works in oils and the surfaces of his paintings are thick, and one might say, gloppy.  The texture on the faces he paints are there for one reason only, to make the ugliness of their character (and their policies) apparent. By making the interior visible, Conal is encouraging his audience to see the politicians as he does, and if there is any doubt about their complicity in what he sees as a horrific agenda, he spells it out directly on the painting using puns to make his points. Though it seems obvious, it should be noted that these faces do not have targets superimposed on them.  Conal is promoting understanding rather than an implied specific action.

Robbie Conal's Brett Kavanaugh
Brett Kavanaugh
Robbie Conal's Carter Page
Carter Page
Robbie Conal: Larry Kudlow
Larry Kudlow

In his Cabinet of Horrors, Conal has painted everyone from Donald Trump to Brett Kavanaugh.  Included are portraits of Mike Pence, Stephen Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Michael Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, and on and on. The sheer number of “Horrors” in the administration seems to be a subtext of this show. The most striking portraits are Bully Culprit (Donald J. Trump), in full dictator pose, Kellyanne Conway, envisioned as Pinocchio with “Knows Job” scrawled above, and John R. Bolton, very much an aging zombie paired with the title, “Used War Salesman.” Are we laughing or crying? Conal, one assumes, expects us to do both as we recognize the satire laced throughout his work.

As political statements, there is no argument that the work of Carey and Conal are most effective when experienced as they were originally intended. When Carrey harnesses his outrage in a timely response to current events on Twitter, he maximizes the attention they receive. Likewise, Conal’s posters papered onto city walls are the direct descendants of historical political cartoons and Early American broadsheets. The urgency inherent in both mediums successfully conveys the message better than any gallery show is able to do. However, there is a real pleasure in seeing these works in the context of a gallery because as paintings and drawings they each possess an energy and artistry not easily communicated through posters and iPhones. There is also value in acknowledging and appreciating the artists’ efforts that they make at some risk to themselves. Is this burgeoning branch of the resistance in time to effect change? It is impossible to know, but hats off to the artists who are willing to claim the emperor has no clothes, except perhaps for a very long red tie.

[paypal_donation_button]

Lorraine Heitzman is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles. She has written about the local arts community for ArtCricketLA and Armseye Magazine and is currently a regular contributor to Art and Cake. In addition to exhibiting her art, Ms. Heitzman has her own blog, countingknuckles.com, and her art can be seen on her website lorraineheitzman.com

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email

Filed Under: Art, Artist, The Line

The Line

A poetic interpretation of Anselm Kiefer's Exodus, at Los Angeles Marciano Art Foundation, is at Riot Material.

On Wing With Word Through Anselm Kiefer’s Exodus

Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles (through 25 March 2023) by Rachel Reid Wilkie Los Angeles poet Rachel Reid Wilkie was given the task of walking into Anselm Kiefer’s Exodus — a literally monumental exhibition, in that each of these paintings are upwards of 30’ tall — and addressing the colossal artworks “cold,” as in […]

Detail of Henry Taylor, "Warning shots not required," 2011. At Riot Material magazine.

Henry Taylor’s B Side: Where Mind Shapes Itself to Canvas

Henry Taylor: B Side at MOCA Grand, Los Angeles (through 30 April 2023) Reviewed by Eve Wood Ages ago when there were LP records and 45s, the B side of a popular single made allowances for experimentation and could be counted on as an alternative vision to the more mainstream and compulsory hit single. B […]

Songbook of a Bygone Dead: Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song

Reviewed by Dan Chiasson The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan Simon & Schuster, 352pp., $28.93 NYR Bob Dylan’s new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, is a kind of music-appreciation course open to auditors and members of the general public. It is best savored one chapter, one song, at a time, while listening to the […]

Smoking the Bible by Chris Abani

Words To Wrap Around A Dying Brother

Smoking the Bible Reviewed by Rhony Bhopla Smoking the Bible by Chris Abani Copper Canyon Press, 96pp., $15.99 HR Chris Abani’s autobiographical book of poems, Smoking the Bible, centers on the relationship of two brothers growing up in Nigeria with an Igbo father and an English mother. The poems, which incorporate the Igbo language along […]

Grant Wallace, “Through Evolution Comes Revelation.” at Riot Material magazine.

Communication Breakdown: Grant Wallace, His Heirs & the Legacy of a Forgotten Genius

Grant Wallace: Over the Psychic Radio at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC (through 3 December 2022) By Michael Bonesteel Freelance writer and editor Deborah Coffin of Albany, California, was in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley in 1997 when she first encountered street musician Brian Wallace at a party. “I had a friend who knew Brian,” […]

The Joshua Tree Talk

A Conversation on Dzogchen C von Hassett & Rachel Reid Wilkie at Joshua Tree Retreat Center 

Louise Bourgeois: What Is The Shape of This Problem?

at University of Southern California, Fisher Museum of Art. (through 3 December 3, 2022) Reviewed by Margaret Lazzari Louise Bourgeois is widely recognized for her sculptures and installations, but Louise Bourgeois: What is The Shape of This Problem is a wonderful opportunity to immerse yourself in her perhaps-lesser-known prints, fabric work and writings. This exhibit contains over […]

Moonage Daydream Conveys More Myth Than Man

Moonage Daydream Dir. Brett Morgan Reviewed by Nicholas Goldwin As one of the greatest shapeshifters in the expansive history of rock music, it seems only fitting that the documentary with David Bowie as its subject never seems content to express the trials, tribulations and artistic triumphs of Bowie in any one fixed way. This is […]

Carnación di Rocío Molina, at Riot Material Magazine.

On Binding: Notes from Venice

Bienalle Arte and Bienalle Danza, Venice 2022 By Allyn Aglaïa Chest bound, lips sealed, I walked through Venice alone, quiet, and: thought about narratives that bind us to erotic binds

Mohammad Barrangi's Guardians of Eden (Dreamscape #8), at Riot Material magazine.

Transcendence Beyond Erasure in Mohammad Barrangi’s Dreamscape

at Advocartsy, Los Angeles (thru 5 November 2022) Reviewed by Christopher Ian Lutz Fantasy requires a symbolic vehicle to transport a character from the real world into the imaginary realm, where the laws of reality are subverted or obscured to justify an otherwise absurd event. The artist might depict the vehicle as a real object […]

Soul Crash: Our Slow, Inexorable Release Into the Metaverse

by Sue Halpern The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball Liveright 352pp., $18.89 NYR In October 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would now be called Meta and its business interests would be pivoting to the metaverse, there was almost universal confusion: most observers had no idea what he was […]

green tara

Pointing the Staff at the Old Man

A wisdom transmission by Samaneri Jayasāra Excerpted from —  Advice from the Lotus Born  from the chapter “Pointing the Staff at the Old Man” Translated by Eric Pema Kunsang Rangjung Yeshe Publications, 184pp., $21.95 . .

Margaret Lazzari’s "Shimmer." From the exhibition "Breathing Space."

Margaret Lazzari’s Luminous Breathing Space

at George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles (through 8 October 2022) Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner “Things are not what they seem: nor are they otherwise.” –Buddha Margaret Lazzari’s luminous solo exhibition of paintings, entitled Breathing Space, were painted during the pandemic, and the exhibition title is indeed significant. It’s defined as a respite, a hiatus, or an […]

From Phil Tippet's Mad God, reviewed at Riot Material magazine.

Nihilism Births Its Own Interminable Hell

Mad God Dir. Phil Tippett Reviewed by Nicholas Goldwin Technically astonishing and immersive to a fault, director Phil Tippett successfully demonstrates that thirty years of relentless dedication to your craft can lead to cinematic innovations even his old stomping grounds – the sets of Star Wars and Jurassic Park – have yet to catch up. […]

A Look Back on an Iconoclast: Art Critic Dave Hickey

by Jarrett Earnest Far From Respectable: Dave Hickey and His Art by Daniel Oppenheimer University of Texas Press, 141 pp., $24.95 The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty, Revised and Expanded by Dave Hickey University of Chicago Press, 123 pp., $15.00 (paper) Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy by Dave Hickey Art Issues Press, 215 […]

John Lurie’s The History of Bones

Reviewed by Cintra Wilson The History of Bones: A Memoir by John Lurie Random House, 435 pp., $28.00 NYRB It was 1989 when I saw John Lurie on TV in a late-night advertisement for the new Lounge Lizards album, Voice of Chunk, which was “not available in stores” and selling exclusively through an 800 number. Operators were standing […]

Marlene Dumas, "Losing (Her Meaning)," 1988. At Riot Material magazine.

Marlene Dumas’ Masks of Inborn Gods

open-end, at Palazzo Grassi, Venice (through 8 January 2023) Reviewed by Arabella Hutter von Arx Four relatively small artworks greet the visitor in the first room of the Marlene Dumas exhibit, open-end, at Palazzo Grassi. D-rection shows a young man contemplating his rather large and purple erection. A bluish white face and a brown face unite […]

Clarice Lispector

Baffling the Sphinx: The Enigmatic World of Clarice Lispector

Reviewed by John Biscello Água Viva by Clarice Lispector New Directions Publishing 88pp., $14.95 Too Much of Life: The Complete Crônicas by Clarice Lispector New Directions Publishing 864pp., $29.95 The word is my fourth dimension –Clarice Lispector And on the eighth and endless day, where the bottomless hallelujah meets Ouroboros, God created Clarice Lispector. Maybe. […]

Donna Ferrato "Diamond, Minneapolis, MN 1987." At Riot Material magazine

Donna Ferrato’s Magnificent Holy

at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, NYC (through July 29 2022) Reviewed by Phoebe Hoban The small scale of Donna Ferrato’s snapshot-like black-and-white photographs belies their personal and political power. Whether they document the medical sinks and shelves in a now-shuttered Texas abortion clinic, or hone in on the badly bruised face of a domestic violence […]

Darcilio Lima Unknown Lithograph, 1972. At Riot Material magazine.

Magia Protetora: The Art of Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos and Darcilio Lima

at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick, Cleveland OH (through 30 September 2022) Curated by Stephen Romano Gallery Reviewed by Christopher Ian Lutz The extension of a lineage occurs not merely by the repetition of form, but by the intersection of conservation and revolution. Transformation is fundamental to preserving the essence of a given tradition’s rituals and […]

Eve Wood's A Cadence for Redemption, written in the fictive voice of Abraham Lincoln, is excerpted at Riot Material magazine.

Songs For Our Higher Selves

A Cadence for Redemption: Conversations With Abraham Lincoln by Eve Wood Del Sol Press, 46pp., $5.99 Employing the fictive voice of a former president, Eve Wood shifts the perspective on the happenings of our times – where all indicators point to the slow, inexorable collapse of the American Experiment – to the one man who […]

The Clear, Crisp Taste of Cronenberg

Crimes of the Future Reviewed by Anna Shechtman and D.A. Miller Neon NYRB A line from Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg’s latest film, has been trailing it around with the campy insistence of an old-fashioned ad campaign: “Surgery is the new sex.” On receiving this information, a skeptical Saul Tenser, played by Viggo Mortensen, asks, “Does there have […]

Georganne Deen, How to prepare people for your weirdness (Painting for a gifted child) 2022

Conjuring a Divine Silence in Georganne Deen’s The Lyric Escape

at Rory Devine Fine Art, Los Angeles (through 6 August) Reviewed by Eve Wood Albert Camus once famously asked, “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” One can only hope that this was a rhetorical question, yet however ironic, it is still a sentiment worth pondering, especially considering today’s current socio-political climate […]

Pesticides in our foods inevitably enter the body and will have the intended effect of killing the organism. Which is to say you are certain to become diseased and evenutally die from the longterm ingestion of industrial pesticides.

A Strictly Organic Diet is Good Enough to Save Your Life

A chapter excerpt from Entering the Mind, the new book from C von Hassett which speaks to an ageless way of resting the mind in meditation to both recognize and stabilize in its already Awakened state. Yet to do this successfully, we must first cleanse the body of its myriad mind-fogging toxins taken in through […]

Milton’s Quotidian Paradise, Lost

By Catherine Nicholson Katie Kadue: Domestic Georgic: Labors of Preservation from Rabelais to Milton Timothy M. Harrison: Coming To: Consciousness and Natality in Early Modern England Nicholas McDowell: Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton Joe Moshenska: Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton NYRB Of the many liberties John Milton took in writing Paradise Lost, his 1667 epic […]

Foucault in Warsaw and the Shapeless, Shaping Gaze of the Surveillance State

Reviewed by Marcel Radosław Garboś Foucault in Warsaw by Remigiusz Ryziński  translated by Sean Gasper Bye Open Letter Books, 220pp., $15.95 Harvard Review Since Poland’s state socialist system collapsed in 1989, the records of its police agencies and security services have gone to a government commission entrusted with the “prosecution of crimes against the Polish […]

Noah Davis, Untitled (2015)

The Haunt of One Yet Faintly Present: Noah Davis, Still at Home

Noah Davis, at the Underground Museum, Los Angeles Reviewed by Ricky Amadour Directly across from the entrance, an opening statement to Noah Davis, at the Underground Museum, reads “many of the paintings you are about to see were painted in this space.” Smudges, dribbles, and droplets on the floor embody the physical notion of Davis […]

Julian Schnabel, The Chimes of Freedom Flashing (detail), 2022

The Supremely Humanistic Hand of Julian Schnabel

For Esmé – With Love and Squalor, at Pace Gallery, Los Angeles (through 21 May 2022) Reviewed by Eve Wood How does one represent, let alone quantify hope, hate, grief, love, joy, tragedy, or anything, for that matter, which stands in opposition to something else? Throughout his illustrious career, Julian Schnabel has always been one to […]

Rose Wylie, "I Like To Be" (2020)

In Full Surrender to the Wylie Eye

Rose Wylie: Which One, at David Zwirner, NYC (through 12 June) Reviewed by David Salle Rose Wylie: Which One by Rose Wylie; with Barry Schwabsky, Judith Bernstein, and Hans Ulrich Obrist David Zwirner Books, 196pp., $75.00 NYRB Rose Wylie, who is now eighty-seven, has been painting in the same rural studio in Kent, England, since […]

The Artful Construction of The ‘I’

by Merve Emre NYR The essay form…bears some responsibility for the fact that bad essays tell stories about people instead of elucidating the matter at hand. —Theodor Adorno The personal essay is a genre that is difficult to define but easy to denounce. The offending element is rarely the essay as a form, but its […]

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in