Backlash.
http://nytimes.com/2009/03/18/arts/design/18fair.html?8dpcArt Review | Shepard Fairey
Can a Rebel Stay a Rebel
Without the Claws? “Guns and Roses” (2007), like much of Shepard Fairey’s art,
gives a nod to poster imagery, in this case Chinese.
Were that consciously integrated, Mr. Fairey’s work would be
more like art than like canny illustration of what everyone already knows.
“Arab Woman” (2006) and other works evoke the third world.
By KEN JOHNSON
Published: March 17, 2009
BOSTON — You will be seeing a lot more art by
Shepard Fairey on the streets of New York this spring. But it won’t be in the form of the illegal guerrilla strikes he has been committing since his days as a student at the
Rhode Island School of Design 20 years ago, nor anything like his famous Obama Hope poster. For starters, it is in the windows of
Saks Fifth Avenue, for whom he has also designed swanky red, white and black Russian Constructivist-style limited-edition shopping bags.
Before the Saks campaign makes it painful even to think about this artist, who did more than any other to get our current president elected, you might consider a trip to the
Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston to see his first museum retrospective.
The surprise of the show — for the uninitiated, at least — will be that almost everything Mr. Fairey does, from his abstracted images of
Andre the Giant to his album covers for
Led Zeppelin and other bands, is visually arresting. Those who have followed his career won’t be surprised, either, by his progression from aesthetic anarchist to savvy, all-purpose designer and illustrator whose street cred has been worn out by his all-too-successful commercial ventures.
Nothing if not versatile, Mr. Fairey can work as effectively on billboards as on laptop screens. A resourceful sampler and recycler of found imagery, he has incorporated graphic motifs and compositions from the Russian Constructivist
Alexander Rodchenko, Chinese Communist propaganda, American Social Realism, Islamic patterns, neo-Classical-style postage stamps and stock certificates, as well as from the Pop Art of
Andy Warhol. And in collaging silk-screened copies of many different sorts of images, words and textures, often at radically different scales, he integrates vertiginous complexity into works of punchy legibility, partly by means of a suave color sensibility usually limited to shades of red, black and off-white.
He is clever with words too. A 2003 poster reads: “War Is the Answer! Elect Bush and Still Get Gore!”
Among his most compelling works are those revolving around images of beautiful, rifle-toting women and children from third world countries. Flowers in their gun barrels suggest a revolution of loving maternity over the Big Brotherly patriarchy represented in other images by the face of Andre the Giant, who usually appears above the caption “Obey.”
The Boston show, organized by
Pedro H. Alonzo, an independent curator, and
Emily Brouillet, a former assistant curator at the institute, includes works placed outdoors around Boston, presented here as domesticated tokens of the graffitilike practices for which Mr. Fairey has been arrested on numerous occasions. (This time around, he was arrested on his arrival at the retrospective’s opening-night party, and he faces at least 14 vandalism-related charges and possibly 19 more.)
Despite its rousing first impact, the exhibition leaves you with a sense of dismay at the devolution of a certain avant-garde dream into a kind of visual easy listening for the college-educated masses.
The fantasy that has animated Mr. Fairey’s career is that of the artist anonymously intervening in public life like a benign terrorist, unsettling collective complacency and inspiring new, critically perceptive thoughts about how the world works. His method has been to paste images and words that grab attention but then, unlike advertising and propaganda, deliver contradictory, ambiguous and vaguely menacing messages. This is supposed to have the effect of prompting epiphanies about possible alternative social realities.
It’s an idea whose popularity goes back at least to the ’60s, when artists like
Adrian Piper and
Stephen Kaltenbach inserted seemingly nonsensical ads in art magazines and other periodicals. Later
Jenny Holzer pasted up her lists of Truisms, and
Jean-Michel Basquiat wrote his mystifying coinage “SAMO” all over town, to similarly perplexing effect.
On another track,
Barbara Kruger produced simulations of magazine layouts to incite criticism of, and resistance to, the so-called dominant culture. She also lent her talents to campaigns for the abortion-rights movement (“Your Body Is a Battleground”) and commercial enterprises like Bloomingdale’s (the “I Shop Therefore I Am” shopping bag), and has had her works printed on all kinds of surfaces, from mural-size canvases to matchbook covers.
Mr. Fairey has acknowledged his debt to Ms. Kruger, but he seems cheerfully oblivious to how his ideas about being subversive through art are fatally familiar, not to say naïve. They were radical half a century ago; now they are the stuff of college art history courses. Does anyone not realize that capitalism is contradictory? Is anyone’s world really rocked by something that can’t be immediately categorized? Every day we are swamped with images and ideas that pretend to confound conventional thinking. That’s popular culture.
What is missing from his work is a deeper, more personal and therefore less predictably formulaic dimension. What might that be?
It is not too difficult to discern the shadows of an Oedipal drama swimming below the surface. Here is the baffling, autocratic father represented most powerfully by the image of Andre the Giant (whose positive counterpart is the Good Father Obama). There is the beguiling, possibly dangerous mother embodied in many images of nameless, alluring female warriors. And the son is portrayed in pictures of
Joey Ramone,
Sid Vicious and other young rebels who would stand in for Mr. Fairey himself and who would depose and replace the Bad Father.
Maybe if some such psychological dimension were more consciously integrated, Mr. Fairey’s work would be more like art than like canny illustration of what everyone already knows.
“Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand” runs through Aug. 16 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Avenue, Boston; (617) 478-3100,
icaboston.org. http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/03/17/arts/design/20090318-fairey-slideshow_index.htmlFrom the Street to the MuseumShepard Fairey, who for years was an artist whose work was seen primarily on streets,
now has his first museum retrospective, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
Mr. Fairey may be best known for his Obama Hope poster.
The
Times’s Ken Johnson writes:
The surprise of the show — for the uninitiated, at least —
will be that almost everything Mr. Fairey does, from his abstracted images
of Andre the Giant, left, to his album covers for Led Zeppelin and other bands,
is visually arresting.
"Obey Tupac" (2004). Those who have followed Mr. Fairey’s career won’t be surprised, either,
by his progression from aesthetic anarchist to savvy, all-purpose designer
and illustrator whose street cred has been worn out by his all-too-successful commercial ventures.
"Obey Revolution Girl" (2005). A resourceful sampler and recycler
of found imagery, Mr. Fairey has incorporated graphic motifs and compositions
from the Russian Constructivist Alexander Rodchenko, Chinese Communist
propaganda, American Social Realism, Islamic patterns,
neo-Classical-style postage stamps and stock certificates.
He has also borrowed from the Pop Art of Andy Warhol, seen here
in a portrait,
"Obey Andy Warhol" (2004). "Obey Middle East Mural" (2009). Among his most compelling works are those revolving around images
of beautiful, rifle-toting women and children from third world countries, with flowers in their gun barrels.
"Obey Angela Davis" (2005). The fantasy that has animated
Mr. Fairey’s career is that of the artist anonymously intervening
in public life like a benign terrorist, unsettling collective complacency
and inspiring new, critically perceptive thoughts about how the world works.
"Two Sides of Capitalism: Bad" (2007). His method has been to paste images and words that grab attention but then,
unlike advertising and propaganda, deliver contradictory, ambiguous and vaguely menacing messages.
"Mujer Fatal" (2008). What is missing from Mr. Fairey's work
is a deeper, more personal and therefore less predictably formulaic dimension.