Shepard Fairey, the man behind Obey Giant is a bit of a hero of mine. Ive loved his stuff for years and i tend to horde anything i can find by him. I just agree with his philosphy of taking back urban space, and "the medium is the message". In his words-
" The Obey campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. the first aim of Phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environment. The Obey Campaign attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisement or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with Obey propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalising the viewer's perception and attention to detail."
His work is usually screen printed, and as such uses few colours. this adds to the impact of his pieces as the red, black and white create a strong colour field when lots of posters are put together in the same spot. The whole campaign is obviously inspired by propaganda, such as russian communist propaganda, and from the book and film 1984. Dystopian future literature is another of my loves so it all works out nicely.
3 comments:
Sad... Very sad... Does it not bother you that Shepard Fairey stole just about every idea he's ever had from other artists with TRUE ideologies (whether you agree with them or not) slapped on a meaningless slogan, justified his plagiarism with shallow intellectualizing, then made HUGE profits from the suckers who bought into it? Check this out:
http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm
You don't even have to read the article, just compare the photos.
Obviously you have never heard of Appropriation Art. Andy Warhol did exactly the same thing. Fairey is not shy about where he finds these images, he will tell you that he finds and pretty much copies them. Does that make him a bad artist? He appropriates these images into something else, artist do it all the time. I don't see anything wrong with it. If you discredit every artist who does not "make" tier own stuff, you discredit pretty much all contemporary art after the 1950's.
Sorry.. my comment above is meant for Tie-dyed Tehuti.
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