By David Jenison | Monday, March 16, 2009 9:00 AM
While his agit-pop paintings hang in galleries around the globe, English has been "liberating" billboards since his Reagan-era college days in Texas. Playing Robin Hood to Clear Channel's Nottingham, the shaggy-haired artist originally usurped billboard space as an outlet for his work and to protest corporate America's paid self-expression. Moving to NYC in the mid-80s, his environmental activist roommates inspired more meaningful billboards aimed at targets like automotive gas-guzzlers.
"Why does a 130-pound woman need a 7,000 pound vehicle to carry 30 pounds of groceries? Especially when a 220-pound man can just as easily truck around on a 30-pound bicycle?" asks English, whose energy-related billboards include the classic "Hummer: Not Your Daddy's War Wagon."
English takes aim at cigarette companies as well. Believing that Joe Camel was a cartoon character meant to lure young people into smoking, he created Cancer Kids billboards with little Joe Juniors puffing their lungs away. English also took a bite out of Apple with a series of "Think Different" billboards featuring people like Bill Gates and Charles Manson, and he challenged the Golden Arches by imagining what Ronald McDonald would look like if he actually ate at Mickey Ds every day. Fittingly, this McDonalds imagery found its way into Morgan Spurlock's Oscar-nominated documentary "Super Size Me."
English, who's conducted over 1,000 such felonious liberations, also puts meaningful messages into his canvases. For example, one painting superimposed the X-Men's Cyclops over Malcolm X. The artist notes that society attacked the X-Men because of their gifts, a parallel he sees with Malcolm.
"This prejudice grew out of jealousy," says English. "It was because society felt inferior, not superior."
Despite its pro-X connotation, the painting nearly caused an incident when it debuted at a gallery in the nation's capitol. A group of Muslims, who misunderstood the meaning, threatened to thrash the gallery if the painting appeared in the show. English refused to let the gallery take it down, and the group showed up that night and surrounded him.
"I have to admit, I wasn't so cocky when they all showed up," English laughs. "I told them, 'Just walk around the show and look at the visual language I use, and if you'll give me that and you still don't like the painting, I'll go in the alley and get you the bricks myself to smash things up.' They walked around very quietly with their arms folded looking stern, but when they came back, the lead guy said, 'Thank you for making that painting.'"
"Rockwell's idealistic view of America didn't seem to include African-Americans," says English. "That America seemed too exclusive so I 'color corrected' the painting."
English, already the subject of two documentaries ("Popaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English" and "Abraham Obama"), often intertwines his paintings and billboards. After Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was stabbed to death for financing a movie that criticized Islam's treatment of women, English debuted the canvases Muslim Van Gogh and Muslim Starry Night at a show in Amsterdam. For the artist, it was an important message about the interconnectedness of life so he also made billboard-sized versions that he posted around the city. With a nod to John Lennon, the billboards included the words "Jihad Is Over (If You Want It)."
"After the stabbing, the city panicked," recalls English. "People in Amsterdam were comparing this to 9/11. They feared the Muslims had come to the city to take it over, not to blend in. I wanted the images to remind everyone that things can't exist in opposition forever. They eventually have to absorb each other."
In recent months, English has been promoting his Abraham Obama series, a mash-up image of Abraham Lincoln and the President, that he plastered across cities nationwide in the lead up to the election. Next up, the artist hijacks more pop iconography in Rock Paper Scissor, a group show at L.A.'s Robert Berman Gallery, also featuring works by art-minded musicians Daniel Johnston, the Butthole Surfers' Gibby Haynes, Raymond Pettibon (Black Flag's iconic four bars logo), and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo. The exhibit runs through March 21.
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