E-Mail This Article to a Friend ART Now you see it ... now you don’t BY CAMILLE DODERO

It was the first time in six years that the Middle East, owned by brothers Joseph and Nabil Sater, asked Out of the Blue Gallery, the Cambridge art space that curates exhibitions in the Central Square restaurant’s main dining room, to remove an entire visual-art show from its walls. Once, recalls Out of the Blue office manager/resident poet/gallery mouthpiece Deborah Priestly, a piece bearing a limned penis was deemed too graphic for the family restaurant when an unnamed artist furtively sneaked the private part into the show after organizers approved the collection. Another time, there was a three-dimensional pipe filled with red-and-brown goop, a mess that Priestly remembers resembling "doo-doo and blood," that magically materialized in a show. That too had to go away.

But Dave Conley’s "Democracy in Crisis" show was different. A collection of silk-screened propaganda-style posters, the exhibit didn’t expressly delineate sexual organs — rather, it compared American leaders to sexual organs. A black-and-white image of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell, for instance, is surrounded by chunky text that asks: WITH A DICK, A BUSH AND A COLON RUNNING THE COUNTRY ... DID YOU EVER GET THE FEELING YOU ARE BEING FUCKED.

A long-time silkscreen artist and former frontman of Boston-based hardcore bands Tree and Drug War, Conley is a manual laborer by vocation ("Painting, construction, plastering, landscaping — I do whatever needs to be done") who earned populist labels like "working-class hero" singing about things like NAFTA, the American dream, and the environment. But as a hardcore performer who’s been known to howl like a creature ensnared in a bear trap, Conley’s never been one to speak softly: as a member of Drug War, he growled out songs like "Attack of the Crack Addicts," "I Got Britney Spears Drunk on Beers," and "I’m Not Fucking Around." "Democracy in Crisis" assumes that same creative style: goofy, simple, and direct. BUSH $UCK$ is a common tagline among the pieces, as are angry-looking black-and-white images of the president.

The exhibit went up in the Middle East front room on a Sunday; two days later, it was taken down. "There were certain words that weren’t appropriate in the family dining room," says Jennifer Wolfe, daytime bartender at the Middle East. "The F-word and other references. Nabil and I and some of the other staff members agreed it’s absolutely nothing against the artist, the exhibit, the viewpoint, or anything. In a dining room where parents come with their kids, that kind of language was not something we could have hanging on the walls."

Wolfe says there were some positive responses. "We had people come in that absolutely loved it. But we also had parents coming in and saying, ‘I can’t come in here with my eight-year-old and have them saying, "Mommy, what does Bush sucks mean?"’"

"We knew Dave Conley’s work was a little counterculture, a little funky," says Priestly, who admits that Out of the Blue curators argued about displaying the show before it went up. "But in the end, it was decided that there’d be no problem."

Conley says he isn’t angry, just surprised. And promoter Ami Bennett, who helped Conley publicize the show, echoes the view that there are no hard feelings. "[Joseph and Nabil’s decision] has to be respected. The Middle East allows local artists to hang art, they don’t take a commission, they feed the people, they give us hugs. They are family."

Wolfe is quick to point out that this wasn’t a case of a leftist rock club suppressing the political viewpoints of an artist — the restaurant caters to a different clientele than the club. "No, in the club, it’s either an 18-plus show or a 21-plus show. There’re no little kids."

But what about the larger political issue — that having vituperative anti-administration posters hanging on the walls of a place called the Middle East might not be a such a wise idea in a post-9/11 world? Did that factor into the decision to remove "Democracy in Crisis"? "No, not at all," insists Wolfe. "It was simply the language."

To view "Democracy in Crisis," visit www.crushbush.com . Conley is currently soliciting suggestions for where he might display the exhibit.