Shepherd Fairey’s OBEY Campaign
In thinking about some of the themes and theories we talked about over the course of this term, I started to reconsider what some of my thoughts were regarding issues of appropriation. It was always something I was aware of, but was never really certain what some of the reasons behind it were, or what it meant. I’m certain that the way I think about and look at art will be affected by some of things we’ve talked about in this class. My definition for what appropriation is, and what an author is have changed dramatically.
I recently read an essay that was extremely critical of Shepherd Fairey’s OBEY campaign, and his exhibition that is now on in Los Angeles. The main critique was that Fairey had plagiarized most of the works he was displaying in this show. If anyone is familiar with his style, he has built a small empire on using images of war and propaganda to comment on the culture of fear and media saturation we live in. These works most often take the form of stencils and posters, put up guerilla style around major urban centers.
I couldn’t believe just how angry the author was about what he thought of as Fairey’s career being built on stealing, when, as we have seen, artists from all eras have used the art created before them to make new works.
I think this has a lot to do with the relationship between art and commerce. Artists of any stripe can and should appropriate. T-shirt and coffee mug salesman should not. The art of making art with appropriated materials will change the original meaning behind them, even if the physical change of the appropriated object is not dramatic. The act of appropriating an image to sell something will always be different than the act of appropriating an image to say something.
This is the article: http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm
This is Shepherd Fairey’s OBEY campaign site: http://obeygiant.com/main.php/
– Matt
