A street artist famous for his red, white and blue "Hope" posters of President Barack Obama has been arrested on warrants accusing him of tagging property with graffiti, police said Saturday.Shepard Fairey was arrested Friday night on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art for a kickoff event for his first solo exhibition, called "Supply and Demand."The story of his famous Obama portrait, a large-scale, mixed-media stencilled collage, is already taking on the mythic qualities of a quintessential American narrative. Emerging from humble beginnings in the back alleys of Los Angeles, the portrait became an instant sensation, a pop culture "icon" that was willingly embraced by the Obama political machine.
Before the President-elect sweared his oath of office on Abraham Lincoln's personal Bible, the portrait has became part of the Smithsonian's permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery, which is conveniently only a few blocks from the White House. Fittingly for the narrative of change, the Obama portrait was donated to the gallery by the head of Mr Obama's transition team, Tony Podesta, and his wife, Heather.
The striking resemblance to the Che Guevara portrait which has decorated generations of student bed-sits, has not been dwelt on. But a little way from where Fairey's portrait will hang there is a small portrait of the Cuban revolutionary by Charles "Chaco" Chavez, drawn from the famous photograph by Alberto Korda.
The portrait gallery is better known for its stuffy collection of George Washington portraits than street art, but the museum's curator, Carolyn Kinder Carr, said simply: "We all fell in love with it. We always like portraits that reflect a particular moment in history, and we like the fact that it is an image that resides in popular culture."
He is becoming the ‘darling’ of the under-art world – deemed along side as Banksy, many say that his posters are a throwback to past political representations
Before the President-elect sweared his oath of office on Abraham Lincoln's personal Bible, the portrait has became part of the Smithsonian's permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery, which is conveniently only a few blocks from the White House. Fittingly for the narrative of change, the Obama portrait was donated to the gallery by the head of Mr Obama's transition team, Tony Podesta, and his wife, Heather.
The striking resemblance to the Che Guevara portrait which has decorated generations of student bed-sits, has not been dwelt on. But a little way from where Fairey's portrait will hang there is a small portrait of the Cuban revolutionary by Charles "Chaco" Chavez, drawn from the famous photograph by Alberto Korda.
The portrait gallery is better known for its stuffy collection of George Washington portraits than street art, but the museum's curator, Carolyn Kinder Carr, said simply: "We all fell in love with it. We always like portraits that reflect a particular moment in history, and we like the fact that it is an image that resides in popular culture."
He is becoming the ‘darling’ of the under-art world – deemed along side as Banksy, many say that his posters are a throwback to past political representations
Looking and scouting around the interweb I came across this piece written by artist Mark Vallen and thanks to him for this very eredite piece.
What initially disturbed me about the art of Shepard Fairey is that it displays none of the line, modeling and other idiosyncrasies that reveal an artist’s unique personal style. His imagery appears as though it’s xeroxed or run through some computer graphics program; that is to say, it is machine art that any second-rate art student could produce. In fact, I’ve never seen any evidence indicating Fairey can draw at all. Even the art of Andy Warhol, reliant as it was upon photography and mass commercial imagery, displayed passages of gestural drawing and flamboyant brushstrokes.
Fairey has developed a successful career through expropriating and recontextualizing the artworks of others, which in and of itself does not make for bad art. Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein based his paintings on the world of American comic strips and advertising imagery, but one was always aware that Lichtenstein was taking his images from comic books; that was after all the point, to examine the blasé and artificial in modern American commercial culture. When Lichtenstein painted Look Mickey, a 1961 oil on canvas portrait of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, everyone was cognizant of the artist’s source material - they were in on the joke. By contrast, Fairey simply filches artworks and hopes that no one notices - the joke is on you.Plagiarism is the deliberate passing off of someone else’s work as your own, and Shepard Fairey may be unfamiliar with the term - but not the act. This article is not about the innocent absorption of visual ideas that later materialize unconsciously in an artist’s work, we do after all live in a maelstrom of images and we can’t help but be affected by them. Nor am I referring to an artist’s direct influences - which artist can claim not to have been inspired by techniques or styles employed by others? What I am concerned with is the brazen, intentional copying of already existing artworks created by others - sometimes duplicating the originals without alteration - and then deceiving people by pawning off the counterfeit works as original creations.
After further searching I came across these images which have a link to Fairey's Hope pice, they appeal to my sense of humour
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