Shepard Fairey

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Shepard Fairey (2011)
Shepard Fairey
OBEY Giant clothing

Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970 in Charleston , South Carolina ) is a contemporary street artist , graphic artist and illustrator from the skateboard scene and was first known for his André the Giant Has a Posse sticker campaign. He usually only uses his middle name and last name.

Life and work

Fairey invented the André the Giant Has a Posse sticker campaign in 1989 when he was studying at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). This led to the development of the Obey Giant campaign, which developed into a worldwide campaign through the collaboration and reproduction of the stickers. In a manifesto that Fairey wrote in 1990, he combines his work with Martin Heidegger's concept of phenomenology . His Obey campaign uses various quotes from the John Carpenter film You Live! , including the "Obey" and the "This is Your God" quote. Other influences on the Obey campaign are the feminist conceptual artist Barbara Kruger and the artist Robbie Conal.

Fairey graduated from RISD in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in Illustration. He then started a small print shop called Alternate Graphics in Providence, Rhode Island , specializing in screen printing T-shirts and stickers. During his time in Providence in 1994, Fairey met the American filmmaker Helen Stickler, who also attended RISD and received a degree in film there. In the spring of 1995, Stickler completed a short film documentary about Fairey and his art entitled André the Giant Has a Posse . The film premiered at the New York Underground Film Festival in 1995 . It was also shown at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival and at over 70 other film festivals and museums around the world.

Shepard Fairey founded the design agency BLK / MRKT in 1997 together with Dave Kinsey and Phillip DeWollf, which specialized in guerrilla marketing and the development of high-impact marketing campaigns. Customers included Pepsi , Hasbro and Netscape . Fairey left BLK / MRKT in 2003 and founded his own agency "Studio Number One". This works for clients such as Virgin , Adidas and Nike , among others . In 2001 Fairey founded the fashion label "OBEY clothing".

In 2004, Shepard Fairey co-founded the art and culture magazine Swindle Magazine with Roger Gastman . In July 2006, the book Supply and Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey was published. Fairey made a major appearance in 2010 in the street art documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop by British artist Banksy . In 2013 he took part in the Urban Art Festival MAUS in Soho Málaga , Spain.

In 2012, Fairey created the artwork for the music album Americana by Neil Young and the band Crazy Horse . In late 2014, Fairey worked with New York indie rock band Interpol , putting the artwork from the El Pintor album on a wall on a house in Williamsburg (North 7th Street and Driggs Avenue) and producing a number of prints.

Shepard Fairey also appears as a DJ under the names "DJ Diabetic" and "Emcee Insulin" in clubs. He has diabetes . Fairey lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughters .

He supported Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primaries in the United States .

"Hope" poster and other allegations of plagiarism

Fairey achieved greater notoriety in the course of the election campaign during the 2008 US presidential campaign with his iconic poster "HOPE" for Barack Obama . It is part of a series of posters that Fairey initially designed himself for the Obama campaign. The poster, in the national colors of red, blue and white and stylistically reminiscent of Pop Art , quickly became the best-known motif of the Obama election campaign. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution as part of Obama's inauguration and is on display in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC . The poster was the subject of a copyright litigation between Fairey and the Associated Press news agency . Associated Press claimed the image rights to a as a template serving for the poster photo of AP photographer Mannie Garcia, the Fairey claims to be about the image search in Google found. In January 2011, both sides agreed to share the rights to the "Hope" poster. The financial details of the settlement remained confidential. Fairey and the Associated Press also agreed on a future collaboration in which the artist will use photos from the agency.

The artist Mark Vallen accuses Fairey of further plagiarism. In an extensive and detailed review, he shows various examples of Shepard Fairey's work, which are clearly based on already existing works. Vallen complains that in Fairey's works no personal note is recognizable and that the observer is knowingly deceived due to the cover-up of the original source.

In 2012, Fairey had a guest appearance in the 23rd season of the animated series The Simpsons in the episode Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart (German title El Barto ), which alludes to the film Exit Through the Gift Shop .

gallery

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions (selection)

  • 2002: Overnight Delivery , BLK / MRKT Gallery, Culver City, CA
  • 2002: Shepard Fairey , Kinsey / DesForges Gallery, Culver City, CA
  • 2004: Obey , V1 Gallery, Copenhagen
  • 2004: Supply and Demand , Merry Karnowsky Gallery - LA, Los Angeles, CA
  • 2005: Manufacturing Dissent , Merry Karnowsky Gallery - LA, Los Angeles, CA
  • 2005: Shepard Fairey , Honolulu Museum of Art , Honolulu, HI
  • 2006: Obey , Magda Danysz Gallery, Paris
  • 2006: Rise Above , Merry Karnowsky Gallery - LA, Los Angeles, CA
  • 2007: E Pluribus Venom , Jonathan LeVine Gallery, New York, NY
  • 2007: Ninteeneightyfouria , Stolenspace Gallery, London
  • 2007: Imperfect Union , Merry Karnowsky Gallery - LA, Los Angeles, CA
  • 2009: Supply & Demand , ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston, MA
  • 2009: Shepard Fairey , National Portrait Gallery , Canberra, ACT
  • 2009: Supply & Demand , The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg, PA
  • 2010: Supply and Demand , CAC - Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH
  • 2010: May Day , Deitch Projects - 76 Grand Street, New York, NY
  • 2011: Revolutions - The Album Cover Art Of Shepard Fairey , Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
  • 2015: Paint it Black - Shepard Fairey , Positive-Propaganda eV, Landshuter Allee 54, Munich
  • 2016: Printed Matters , Galo Art Gallery, Turin, Italy
  • 2017: Damaged , Library Street Collective, Los Angeles, CA
  • 2018: Golden Future , Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna, Austria

Group exhibitions (selection)

  • 1999: Sticker Shock: Artists , ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art - University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, PA
  • 2003: Beautiful Losers , CAC - Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH
  • 2004: Backjumps - The Live Issue # 1 , Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien , Berlin
  • 2008: Under a Red Sky , Stolenspace Gallery, London
  • 2009: The Art of Rebellion , Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
  • 2009: Urban Art - Works from the Reinking Collection , Weserburg Museum for Modern Art , Bremen
  • 2009: Viva la Revolucion: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape , Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego - MCASD Downtown, San Diego, CA
  • 2013: At home I'm a tourist: Colección de Selim Varol , CAC Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Málaga, Málaga
  • 2014: The Insistent Image: Recurrent Motifs in the Art of Shepard Fairey and Jasper John , Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charlotte, NC
  • 2016: Victory is Peace - Shepard Fairey x NoNÅME , Positive Propaganda eV, Munich
  • 2018: International Dealmaker - Shepard Fairey, Blu, Escif, NoNÅME , Positive-Propaganda eV, Munich
  • 2019: Node Festival, Affenfaust Gallery, Hamburg

Works in public collections

literature

  • Sarah Jaye Williams: The Philosophy of Obey. Nerve Books, London 2008.

Web links

Commons : Shepard Fairey  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Steven Heller, Véronique Vienne, Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility. Allworth, 2003, ISBN 1-58115-265-5 , p. 223.
  2. ↑ About. In: ObeyGiant.com (English).
  3. ^ Shepard Fairey: Supply & Demand , p. 37.
  4. ^ Studio Number One: Fact Sheet. ( Memento of February 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) PDF. In: StudioNumberOne.com (English).
  5. ↑ Website of the label (English).
  6. ↑ mouse. Retrieved January 24, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Robin Cembalest: Shepard Fairey Paints Neil Young's New songs. In: The New York Times , May 7, 2012 (English).
  8. ^ Inside Shepard Fairey's Provocative New Doors and Interpol Collaborations. In: Rolling Stone , accessed January 26, 2015.
  9. ↑ John Del Signore: Interview ( Memento of the original from January 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: Arts and Events , June 21, 2007 (English). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gothamist.com
  10. ↑ Nicole Powers: Interview in: SuicideGirls , December 12, 2008 (English).
  11. ↑ Now on View: Portrait of Barack Obama by Shepard Fairey. National Portrait Gallery weblog, January 17, 2009 (English).
  12. ↑ Peter Mühlbauer : Intellectual property rights. In: Telepolis , February 6, 2009.
  13. ^ Randy Kennedy: Shepard Fairey and The AP Settle Legal Dispute. In: The New York Times , January 12, 2011.
  14. ↑ Mark Vallen: Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey. In: Art for a change , December 2007 (English).
  15. ↑ Shepard to guest star on The Simpsons TV Show on March 4th !! In: Obey.com , February 23, 2012 (English); Annelie Botz: Interview with Shepard Fairey. In: Interview , November 17, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Fairey, Shepard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fairey, Frank Shepard (full name); Obey (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American artist
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Charleston , South Carolina , USA