THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE: SHEPARD FAIREY AND THE ART OF APPROPRIATION
February 3rd, 2009 by YTWWN
YTWWN: there is a lengthy rebuttal on supertouch about the art of appropriation regarding Shepard Fairey
I think it’s good to hear another side of the story, not just people cutting down tall poppies
(13 votes, average: 3.92 out of 5)
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Sorry, but Shepard’s recent attempts of keeping the profits and the credit for the “Obama-Hope” image that the writer so willfully ignores (With Shepard lying that he didn’t know the source of the original photograph, only that he found it on Google), and the T-shirt controversies (like Mendos’s work being used for profit).
Sorry, I read the article and all I heard was ass-kissing.
Shepard Fairey is only in it for the money and anyone who says otherwise is a fanboy. Plus he’s the reason so many sub-par street artists are doing collabs with big companies now.
Also, I hate his smug richboy face.
“his claims about cash cows simply do not add up, especially since Shepard didn’t have a single solo gallery show for the first 10 years of his career”
ehm yeah, that proofs it…
I often wonder….of the people who talk the loudest about contemporary art and it’s value or lack thereof…how many are frustrated artists waiting for their “big break” and how many have a legitimate viewpoint with some form of art education (formal or not) to back it up?
I mean…people like to bitch. Having access to the internet doesn’t make their viewpoints valid, interesting, or educated.
When someone is making money hand-over-fist on something so deceptively simple that it’s very easy to slip into the “Oh, I could do that!” mindset, it’s hard to take such rancorous criticism seriously…particularly when it’s coming from another artist in the same field who has had very little success.
good artists borrow. the best artists steal. period.
do you think Picasso did the things he did without stealing anything?
put your personal opinions aside + respect an artist for what he or she is trying to do. that’s what art is all about.
“I mean…people like to bitch. Having access to the internet doesn’t make their viewpoints valid, interesting, or educated.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. There is SUCH a long history of appropriation, reuse, and excorporation in art, and this argument seems to need to happen with every generation or two. Get over it, it’s part of art, and always will be. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to let go of the fact that it happens.
ps – at my button company I make a series of buttons that say “just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not art”, “just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s not art”, “just because no one gets it doesn’t mean it is art”, and “just because everyone likes it doesn’t mean it’s good” – all of which have been inspired by all the hew and cry over what is or is not art.
ITS FUNNY BECAUSE THIS SITE IS ABOUT JOCKING BITING WHAT EVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT, BUT IT SEEMS LIKE FAIREY ISNT HOLD TO THIS STANDARD. ANOTHER THING IS SOMEONE CAN DO IS ALTER FAIREY IMAGES THAT HE ALTER FROM SOMEONE ELSE, THEN PEOPLE WOULD CALL THAT PERSON A BITER. ALSO WHO GIVES A SHIT HES GETTING PAID OFF OTHER PEOPLES WORK I DONT THINK HE WOULD LIKE IT IF I GOT PAID OFF HIS WORK!!!! OR MAYBE???
Mat Gleason is an art critic, writer, and publisher of the Coagula Art Journal of Los Angeles, California. In a video interview that appeared in the Ovation Network documentary, Art or Not, Gleason compared Fairey’s art to advertisments for Coca-Cola, saying; “They’re both on the street, they’re both promoting a brand, and at the end of the day, it’s a very empty experience.” Gleason went on to say that, “I think that the art experience is to raise someone’s consciousness, and at the end of the day the Shepard Fairey experience is to promote the brand of Shepard Fairey as a corporate entity, so I don’t consider it art.
the problem with fairey’s mashups is that he isn’t merely inspired by someone else’s work to create something new, bold or original. in many of his pieces he actually just swipes most or all of someone else’s work and passes it off as his own. that’s not creativity, it’s copy/paste.
from what i’ve read, some of this appropriation concerns copyrighted/trademarked images. that’s like a songwriter having trouble writing a catchy hook who decides to just use the chorus from a rolling stones tune. you can call it homage or inspiration, but it’s theft. you can drape it in the vestments of edgy, pop street art, but it’s laziness. if you think that’s “making a statement” you’re just not that deep. and i suspect most people on this site who’d defend fairey’s most blatant rip-offs most likely engage in it themselves for lack of any real creativity.
as far as his being successful with this approach to self-marketing, more power to him. all of us should be so lucky to crap in a bucket and sell it to corporate (and middle) america as high art. but let’s call a spade a spade. it would still be just a bucket of crap.
Hey FUCKPOPSTREETART,
What it means is that even if he didn’t like you getting paid off your versions of his work, he is using that part of the rule book to protect himself, and you as a result would be perfectly within your rights to do the same.
I’m frankly amazed more people aren’t doing it, actually
When are you running the full Shepard Fairy Exposé?
http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm
SO CTP YOUR SAYING THAT I COULD DO THE OBEY “GAINT” AN PUT X’s ON THE EYES AND SHOULD GET PAID FOR IT??? IT WOULD BE MY OWN DESIGN BECAUSE THERE IS X’s INSTEAD OF EYES. ALSO IF I WOULD TO MISSPELL YOUR QUOTES ON YOUR BUTTONS THAT YOU MAKE OR SAY DID IT IN A DIFFRENET FONT THEN IT WOULD BE MINE??? ALSO GET OFF FAIREY NUTS……..
meh…more power to him…anyone with any prolonged exposure to his work sooner or later realizes he is pretty much full of himself and his art has zero credibility. Has anyone actually heard the man talk?…i think he has minor brain damage with a dash of just being a douche. That being said, he’s laughing all the way to the bank. He likes to print posters that mock consumerism and show the evils of capitalism, yet charges 100-500 bucks for a poster…40 bucks for a t-shirt. Brilliant…i wish i had thought of it first.
Dugo – that’s exactly what I am saying.
Also, I’m not talking to anyone else who can’t find their caps lock key…just sayin’ >:-P
http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:EhQiYrGZ2JAJ:slamxhype.com/blogs/youve-been-touched/+slamxhype+youve+been+touched&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=safari
shit is kicking off.
In an interview on RASH (extras I think) Fairey actually said he wanted to “create a brand that didn’t sell anything”. So really he has failed at his life’s work, poor guy. lol
He is a graphic designer that makes add for him self…street art? maybe when he first started..but he was only using it… only ever printed anyway…
Shepard and his ilk are nothing to me, they are like fleas that nibble on the work of real artists. All the wheat pasters and sticker making fanboys who mimic his style with the hopes of getting rich like him should be fed to wolves after getting raped by bears. Shepard does in fact exploit and steal from everything he can, most of all he has stolen the layouts and forms of almost every poster art book ever made. Russian posters, movie posters, war posters, cinema posters, cuban posters… looted for his stupid obey money making schemes.
What was wrong with the original art? Why did feel the need to steal the layouts and slap his own logos and slogans on them? Was the original poster art not good enough for people, he had to slime his ago all over it?
He is a competent and skilled designer, but he completely lacks originality and instead of creating works of art with his degree, he chooses to rework and regurgitate every piece of art he can find in old books.
HE GOT LUCKY, BECAUSE HE TOOK IT TO A NEW LEVEL, AND WAS PERSISTENT.
“…that is to say, it is machine art that any second-rate art student could produce.”
-Mark Vallen
Rich, coming from somebody, the bulk whose work amounts to something any second-rate art student could easily produce, the rest of which, namely his weak poster efforts, any second-rate design student would probably not even bother their little clumsy little asses even producing at all.
Fairey is just another target for the oozing bitterness that is now being directed at Banksy, mostly by the same people who were feverishly directing me towards both artists work tirelessly for what seemed like an eternity. It’s funny that most of the people now vindictively jabbering on at me about how Fairey’s this and Banksy’s that, actually own books and posters or prints of their work.
That’s the trouble with pop art: it’s like pop music, this month’s die-hard fan will inevitably be next’s month self-loathing uber-critic. They scrub and scrub, but the dirt just won’t come off; so they gather it from their fickle skins and hurl it at their fallen idols, as if they are to blame for their fashion victim sensibilities and the fact that they need their taste fed to them through trendy websites and magazines.
My big issue with Fairy and others like him, is that the images he uses/steals/appropriates, already have established meaning and social context. He typically doesnt really do anything to apply new meaning to the alreadey loaded material – he simply stylizes it. The original popculture icon or historical figure already put forth the effort to establish him/herself. We, the society already agreed whether the person is significant or not and what that person represents. The original artist/photographer already decided what was worthwhile to capture on camera or on canvas. If Fairy is trying to tell me something new, but Im “not getting it”, I guess theres a failure to communicate.
I hear comments about how established all these posters/images he re-appropriates were constantly from friends and colleagues who are disgusted with Fairey, as is highly fashionable now. But of the people I know personally who are vocally bitching loudest, I know for a fact they had no knowledge of the yellowstone park poster he re-appropriated for that ‘Welcome to Iraq’ print. I’m also painfully aware of the fact that many of the other artists/designers work he also re-appropriated, save for the blatantly obvious ones, they weren’t even aware of until directed to them through Fairey’s work.
All this delight in slating Fairey is just typical designer-wanker behaviour. The kind of shit I have to listen to at exhibitions and showcases of most designers and illustrators where gaggles of embittered peers gather in bitching little groups like mean-spirited schoolgirls pointing out similarities between those showcasing and existing work, like every piece of their own is free from anything but divine inspiration born out of a unique mix of their own sheer brilliance and intangible magic. Design evolves through inspiration.
I’ve never heard anybody pissing and moaning about Peter Saville’s work for factory records; in fact his re-appropriations were practically wanked over by the design community for the very fact they were re-appropriations.
Wait a second…you guys are doing a great thing by revealing stolen artwork. Don’t fail me now.
Shepard got caught stealing a shit load of images and then justifies it by suggesting that other people before him stole?
Ridiculous.
Stolen is stolen. Shepard is not a tall poppie, he’s a marketeer who has ‘borrowed’ images and got caught. Simple as that.
You can use studies and fancy words and big names to justify theft but the fact is that he’s no better than any of the other rats you feature on your site who make money by stealing the art of other people.