Posted by on Sep 4, 2008 in Art, Design Finds | 1 comment

Have you ever heard the name Shepard Fairey?

I hadn’t.  At least I wasn’t familiar with the name, but I’ve been aware of the some of the work he’s done.  Have you ever seen that “Obey” logo with the Andre the Giant face stencil?  I think I’ve seen them around town, there’s a giant Obey face spraypainted near the gas station on Keeaumoku.  And another one spraypainted at the old theatre over on Waialae at Kaimuki.

So anyway, I stumbled across this article where I finally connected the art with the name.  I thought, they this is pretty good. And it IS. I like that style – it’s very Rage Against the Machine, revolution-poster, Che Guevara thing going on.

And then what follows is some commentary about how Shepard commonly regurgitates / plagiarizes old graphic poster art. Basically he’s made a good living out of using other people’s work.  It’s an interesting read as well…this person did a lot of research into the subject.

I’m divided.

On one hand, I can appreciate it for what it is.  Someone had the talent to recycle old street artwork and turn it into a successful product — and he didn’t do a bad job of it either. I never understood the fascination with Warhol either but he did the same thing with pop-art.  (A cousin of mine bought me a Warhol poster where it’s a black and white image of the “Last Supper”…all it had was some color swatches placed on top of the image.  WTF mate.)

But then again, I can understand the opposite point of view. As a person trying to make a living in this career, one of the biggest concerns that we have is someone else pitching our own original stuff as their own. We did all the work, they get all the glory.  Hmmm…yeah whatever.  I’m not going to get all philosophical about it.

But it’s still an interesting thing to see how finicky graphic art can be. You can take a simple clip art image, slap some photoshop effects on it and some duo-tone colors…VIOLA, you’re rich bitch.

via: Format Mag, Art for Change