Holy Homophobia! poster

Info via Days of Rage:

As one of the mainstays of the Los Angeles street art scene in the 1980s and 1990s, Robbie Conal was known for his satirical images calling out hypocrisy and skewering right-leaning political figures. Here he has reproduced the visage of Jesse Helms—a republican senator from North Carolina, and a leading figure in a years-long charge to severely restrict, if not outright eliminate, arts funding for artists addressing LGBTQ themes or stories in their work—creating a damning portrait of the sanctimonious language the legislator used to agitate for his homophobic worldview. As Conal told the L.A. Times: “[Helms is] an icon for the mean spirit that’s sweeping the country. We in the arts community are just getting a dose of it now, but poor people—and people of color—have been suffering through it for the past 10 years.” The image of Helms superimposed on an artist’s palette (where the thumb-hole creates a void in the senator’s head) was also produced as a billboard, which was located in West Hollywood and initially carried the tagline of “Artificial Art Official,” (Conal’s plan was to change the caption multiple times over the course of three months).

The title is set in caps from ITC Caslon No. 224, with the H in “Holy” added in Linotext. Copies of the poster are available from Robbie Conal’s Art Attack website.