You instantly know who he is. Fairey, a commercial and street artist from New York city, created this and many other iconic images that have become ingrained in the public consciousness, while at the same time managing to avoid becoming a household name. Generally, that's depressing to an artist. If we're all going to be really honest with ourselves, artists are attention whores. We do what we do to communicate the inner blackness of our tortured souls, to present the world with our own asinine views on things we love or hate, blah blah blah. It's all a terrible lie. The truth of the matter is, we do what we do because we're all attention-starved little monsters. No matter what line of bullshit we feed you, know the that the true reason we make art is that we do it for the asspats.
Except for the graffiti artist. In an almost petulent and childish response to the fine art world that has patently rejected graffiti as a legitimate artform, graffiti artists have turned on the paint-spattered heels of their Chuck Taylors and said "fine, you don't want to give us your recognition, we don't need it." It's almost a point of pride for some graffiti artists to labor in obscurity. But with the rise of renouned artists like British wall-scrawler, Banksy, and California based Barry McGee, graffiti has been gaining ground and attention from more people than just the local police.
Enter Shepard Fairey. As a man working in the medium that coined the concept of "street cred," Fairey has been a catalyst for bringing street art off the underpasses and into the gallery. He first caught the public's attention in 1989 with his now-famous "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign, which later morphed into the ongoing "Obey"street art project. Most recently, Fairey has been working with Saks Fifth Avenue for their Spring/Summer ad campaign (something which makes me, personally, cringe, but hey, whatever. I can't say I would refuse that payday if it were offered to me). But it was the now much loved, much ripped-off image of president Barack Obama that has finally cemented Fairey in the public's consciousness, even if they aren't totally aware of it. Earning Fairey a spot in the Smithsonian (the original of the poster was purchased last week for their portraiture collection) and a retrospective at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, this image that has come to graphically represent hope and change appears to have finally brought graffiti to the attention of the fine art frou-frous. What can I say, they're a bit slow.
So why do I want to slap Shepard Fairey across the face? I don't. I like Fairey, always have. That brand of snarky, visual dissent that Fairey and others like him sell has always been a favorite of mine. I'm no where near quick and clever enough to do what guys like Fairey and Banksy do, but I do like them. What has me pissed off, and what's inspiring me to rage this morning, is the abuse of their ideas. We've seen every variation on Obama Hope imaginable, from versions featuring former presidential rival, John McCain, to the most recent version I've seen, being bastardized advertising for octogenarian comedians.
Apart from the fact that I can't think of a single link between Obama and the comic in question, even in the most wild and far-reaching stretches of the imagination, this annoys me on several other levels. First, it's unoriginal. Yes, we know. Obama Hope is everything a graphical image for mass production is supposed to be. It's strong, highly emotionally driven, speaks to the viewer, inspiring, yadda yadda yadda. But since when does one guy "getting it right" justify everyone else who has been charged with creating a visual being lazy and ripping off someone else's work? I know artists routinely borrow liberally from other artists. You might even be able to make a convincing argument on the idea that all art has been borrowed from somewhere. But this direct rip off, changing only the person in the image while everything else remains the same, that is cheap.
I think that's it. I think that word, cheap, perfectly encapsulates how I feel about bogarting a famous image. It's cheap. No original thought goes in to creating the knock-off. Further, the knock-off cheapens the value of the original. Fairey's big "thing" has always been about saturation. Repetition of something is what makes it iconic. Repetition and direct theft, however, cheapens the original, the message, and in this case, the movement it represents. On Fairey's behalf, I feel as though people ripping off this image are mugging him and slapping him across the face. I'm incredibly saddened to think that one day, 14 year olds who've never heard of Barack Obama will one day be wearing t-shirts with this image on them like so much Che Guevara. Hell, Che everywhere bothers me now.
Ultimately, it's that cheapening of things that are and should remain valuable that distresses me most. That and I hate that fuckin' knock-off poster!
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