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Shepard Fairey
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Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is a contemporary artist, graphic designer, and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign. His work became more widely known in the 2008 United States Presidential Election, specifically his Barack Obama "HOPE" poster. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today's best known and most influential street artists. He usually omits his first name.
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Encyclopedia
Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is a contemporary artist, graphic designer, and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign. His work became more widely known in the 2008 United States Presidential Election, specifically his Barack Obama "HOPE" poster. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today's best known and most influential street artists. He usually omits his first name. His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Biography
Shepard Fairey was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. His father is a physician. Fairey became obsessed with art in 1984 at the age of 14. At that time he started to place his drawings on skateboards and T-shirts.
In 1992, Fairey graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. In addition to his successful graphic design career, Fairey also DJ's at many clubs under the name DJ Diabetic and Emcee Insulin, as he has diabetes. Fairey's first art museum exhibition, aptly named Supply & Demand alongside his book, is open in Boston at the Institute of Contemporary Art.
Fairey sits on the advisory board of Reaching to Embrace the Arts, a not-for-profit organization that provides art supplies to disadvantaged schools and students. Fairey currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife Amanda and daughters Vivienne and Madeline.
Life and work
Fairey created the "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign in 1989, while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). This later evolved into the "Obey Giant" campaign, which has grown via an international network of collaborators replicating Fairey's original designs. In a manifesto he wrote in 1990, and since posted on his website, he links his work with Heidegger's concept of phenomenology. His "Obey" Campaign draws from the John Carpenter movie "They Live" which starred pro wrestler Roddy Piper, taking a number of its slogans, including the "Obey" slogan, as well as the "This is Your God" slogan. Fairey has also spun off the OBEY clothing line from the original sticker campaign. He also uses the slogan "The Medium is the Message" borrowed from Marshall McLuhan.
After graduation, he founded a small printing business in Providence, RI called Alternate Graphics, specializing in t-shirt and sticker silkscreens, which afforded Fairey the ability to continue pursuing his own artwork. While residing in Providence in 1994, Fairey met American filmmaker Helen Stickler, who had also attended RISD and graduated with a film degree. The following spring, Stickler completed a short documentary film about Shepard and his work, titled "Andre the Giant has a Posse". The film premiered in the 1995 New York Underground Film Festival, and went on to play at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. It has been seen in more than 70 festivals and museums internationally.
Fairey was a founding partner along with Dave Kinsey and Phillip DeWolff of the design studio BLK/MRKT Inc. from 1997-2003 which specialised in guerilla marketing, and "the development of high-impact marketing campaigns". Clients included Pepsi, Hasbro and Netscape (for whom Fairey designed the red dinosaur version of mozilla.org's logo and mascot).
In 2003 he founded the Studio Number One design agency with his wife Amanda Fairey. The agency produced the cover work for the Black Eyed Peas's album Monkey Business and the poster for the film Walk the Line. Fairey has also designed the covers for The Smashing Pumpkins' album Zeitgeist , Flogging Molly's CD/DVD Whiskey on a Sunday, and the Led Zeppelin compilation Mothership and Anthrax's The Greater Of Two Evils.
In 2004, Fairey joined artists Robbie Conal and Mear One to create a series of "anti-war, anti-Bush" posters for a street art campaign called "Be the Revolution" for the art collective Post Gen. In 2005 Fairey collaborated with DJ Shadow on a box set, with t-shirts, stickers, prints, and a mix CD by Shadow. In 2005 also, he was a resident artist at the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu. In 2006, Fairey contributed eight vinyl etchings to a limited-edition series of 12" singles by alternative rock band Mission of Burma, and has also done work for the musical group Interpol.
In 2004, Shepard Fairey co-founded Swindle Magazine along with Roger Gastman.
"Supply and Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey," was released in 2006. In 2008, Philosophy of Obey (Obey Giant): The Formative Years (1989 - 2008), edited by Sarah Jaye Williams, was published by Nerve Books UK, and praised by Fairey.
In June 2007, Fairey opened his one man show entitled "E Pluribus Venom," at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. The show made the arts section front page in the The New York Times.
In September 2008, Shepard opened his solo show titled "Duality of Humanity" at in San Francisco. His third solo show with the gallery featured one hundred and fifty works, including the largest collection of canvases pieces in one show that he's done. With the reception nearing the November elections, Shepard hosted an after party donating all proceeds to the Obama campaign. At the after party, he created a live mural using his popular image of the Democratic Candidate. Before leaving the city, with over 50 street pieces, he went around the city with "The New York Times".
Fairey was arrested on February 7, 2009, on his way to the premiere of his show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Massachusetts, on two outstanding warrants related to graffiti. He was charged with damage to property for having painted two Boston area locations with graffiti, a Boston Police Department spokesman said.
Barack Obama
Called by The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl "the most efficacious American political illustration since 'Uncle Sam Wants You,'" Fairey created a series of posters supporting Barack Obama's 2008 candidacy for President of the United States, including the iconic "HOPE" portrait. He also created an exclusive design for Rock the Vote. Because the HOPE poster had been "perpetuated illegally" and independently by the street artist, the Obama campaign could not risk any direct affiliation with it. Although the campaign officially disavowed any involvement in the creation or popularization of the poster, Fairey has commented in interviews that he was in communication with campaign officials during the period immediately following the poster's release. Fairey has stated that the original version featured the word "PROGRESS" instead of the word "HOPE," and that within weeks of its release, the campaign requested that he issue (and legally disseminate) a new version, keeping the powerful image of Obama's face but captioning it with the word "HOPE." The campaign openly embraced the revised poster along with two additional Fairey posters that featured the words "CHANGE" and "VOTE."
Fairey distributed 300,000 stickers and 500,000 posters during the campaign, funding his grassroots electioneering through poster and fine art sales. "I just put all that money back into making more stuff, so I didn't keep any of the Obama money," said Fairey in December 2008. In February 2008 (ten months before Election Day), Fairey received a letter of thanks from Barack Obama for his contribution to the campaign. The letter stated:
with Fairey poster of Obama.]]
On November 5, 2008, the city of Chicago posted banners throughout the downtown business district featuring Fairey's Obama "HOPE" portrait.
Fairey created a similar but new image of Barack Obama for TIME Magazine, which was used as the cover art for the 2008 Person of the Year issue. The original iconic "HOPE" portrait was featured on the cover of Esquire Magazine's February 2009 issue, this time with a caption reading, "WHAT NOW?" Shephard Fairey's influence throughout the presidential race was a factor in the artist himself having been named a Person of the Year for 2008 by GQ Magazine.
In January 2009, the "HOPE" portrait was acquired by the US National Portrait Gallery and made part of its permanent collection. It was unveiled and put on display on January 17, 2009.
Legal issues with appropriation and fair use
Fairey has come under criticism for appropriating others' artwork into his own while failing to provide attribution for the work used. However, he has threatened to sue artists for the same technique. Austin, Texas graphic designer Baxter Orr did his own take on Fairey's work in a piece called Protect, with the iconic Obey Giant face covered by a SARS respiratory mask. He started selling prints through his website marketed as his own work. On April 23, 2008 Orr received a signed cease-and-desist order from Fairey's attorneys, telling him to pull Protect from sale because they alleged it violated Fairey's trademark. Fairey threatened to sue, calling the designer a "parasite".
In 2009 it was revealed that the HOPE poster was based on a copyrighted photograph taken in April 2006 by Mannie Garcia while on assignment for the Associated Press (AP), which wants credit and compensation for the work. However, Garcia believes that he personally owns the copyright for the photo, and has said, "If you put all the legal stuff away, I’m so proud of the photograph and that Fairey did what he did artistically with it, and the effect it's had." Fairey feels his use of it falls within the legal definition of fair use. Lawyers for both sides were discussing an amicable agreement. Fairey, however, ultimately filed a federal lawsuit against the Associated Press, seeking a declaratory judgment that his use of the AP photograph was protected by the fair use doctrine and so did not infringe their copyright.
Critical response
Fairey was questioned about criticism surrounding his use of images from social movements, specifically images created by artists of color, in an interview with Liam O'Donoghue for Mother Jones. O'Donoghue later posted an article, titled "Shepard Fairey’s Image Problem", on several independent media sites. The article explored Fairey's use of copyright protected images while at the same time defending his copyright protected works from being used by other artists and corporations. Fairey cited his collaboration with Public Enemy, his funding of the Zapatistas movement, and his six-figure charitable contributions for Darfur assistance as counterpoints to the charges of exploitation. "I challenge anybody to fuck with that, know what I mean," Fairey stated. "It's not like I'm just jumping on some cool rebel cause for the sake of exploiting it for profit. People like to talk shit, but it's usually to justify their own apathy. I don't want to demean anyone's struggles through casual appropriation of something powerful; that's not my intention."
According to Erick Lyle, Fairey has cynically turned graffiti culture into a self-promoting ad campaign, turning street art into a cheap hustle that is no different from corporate advertising. On the other hand, San Diego Union-Tribune art critic Robert L. Pincus says Fairey's, "is political art with a strong sense of visual style and emotional authenticity. Even in times when political art has ebbed, Fairey's has just the right balance of seriousness, irony and wit to fit the mood of the moment" . "Following the example set by gallery art, some street art is more about the concept than the art" writes The Walrus (magazine) contributor Nick Mount. “'Fuck Bush' isn’t an aesthetic; it’s an ethic. Shepard Fairey’s Obey Giant stickers and Akay’s Akayism posters are clever children of Duchamp, ironic conceptual art". However, Stephen Heller of the New York Times suggested that Fairey’s political art is not any more unique than political art from the past, yet compares, in fact and in equal terms, to political art created by Andy Warhol.
In a review of ‘E Pluribus Venom’ at Jonathan LeVine Gallery for the New York Times art critic Benjamin Genocchio stated that Shepard Fairey’s art comes off as “generic” despite the range of mediums and styles used by the artist. Genocchio went on to say that it was tempting to see Fairey’s art as just another luxury commodity.
The director of Ad Hoc Art, Andrew Michael Ford, has stated for the New York Times that Fairey‘s practice does not “match up“ in the minds of people who view his work. Ford suggests that some people will view Fairey’s work as “very commercial”. In his criticism of Fairey’s art he went on to suggest that Fairey is “ripe” for criticism because he profits off of politically and socially charged works. Ford stated that despite his criticism he is a fan of Fairey work.
Mark Vallen, Lincoln Cushing, Josh MacPhee, and Favianna Rodriguez have documented how Fairey has appropriated work by Koloman Moser, Ralph Chaplin, Pirkle Jones, Rupert Garcia, Rene Mederos, Félix Beltrán, Gary Grimshaw, among others, though Jamie O'Shea takes that criticism to task for a "nearly ubiquitous lack of understanding of the artist’s use of appropriated imagery in his work and the longstanding historical precedent for this mode of creative expression" in addition to being masked in a thin "veneer of obvious envy in most cases."
Bloggers have criticized Fairey for accepting commissions from corporations such as Saks Fifth Avenue, for which his design agency produced illustrations inspired by Constructivism (art) and Alexander Rodchenko. Fairey defends his corporate commissions by saying that clients like Saks Fifth Avenue help him to keep his studio operational and his assistants employed. Fairey has acknowledged the irony of being a street artist exploring themes of free speech while at the same time being an artist hired by corporations for consumer campaigns. Of this he has stated that designers and artists need to make money. "I consider myself a populist artist," Fairey says. "I want to reach people through as many different platforms as possible. Street art is a bureaucracy-free way of reaching people, but T-shirts, stickers, commercial jobs, the Internet -- there are so many different ways that I use to put my work in front of people."
Appearances in other media
Overspray Magazines Issue 06 on California Street Art.
- Shepard was on Episode #6007 of G4TV's Icons TV show which originally aired August 12, 2006.
- In 2008 Fairey did an interview with juxtapoz magazine along side good friend Andy Howell (Founder of ) and lil jon.
- In 2006 Shepard Fairey on Selling Out was a cover story in PEEL Magazine issue 7.
- Shepard Fairey's work appears in the book PEEL: The Art of the Sticker, 2008.
- Peter Griffin in the TV show Family Guy is seen painting over the Sistine Chapel with the Obey Giant Icon. Season 4 Episode "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire". On the DVD commentary for this episode, show creator Seth MacFarlane mentions that he was classmates with Fairey at the Rhode Island School of Design.
- Fairey's art is animated to the music from the N.A.S.A. single, Money, which is on their 2008 album, The Spirit of Apollo.
- On January 20, 2009, Fairey made a radio appearance on the Fresh Air program from WHYY, an NPR affiliate, discussing his iconic Obama Hope poster, the official Obama inauguration poster and his many arrests (14 times) in connection with the installation of his "street" works.
- On February 2, 2009 he appeared on the PBS news/talk show "Charlie Rose".
- On February 22, he appeared on CBS Sunday Morning.
- On February 26, 2009, he was again a guest on Fresh Air discussing the Associated Press lawsuit over the Obama Hope poster.
Further reading
- E Pluribus Venom by Shepard Fairey (2008) Gingko Press.
- Philosophy of Obey (Obey Giant): The Formative Years (1989 - 2008), edited by Sarah Jaye Williams (2008), Nerve Books UK.
- Obey: Supply & Demand, The Art of Shepard Fairey by Shepard Fairey (2006), Gingko Press.
External links
- in 2009
- in 2008
- from The New York Times Fashion Magazine
- NPR, February 26, 2009
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