Or maybe you're on the other side of the fence and know him for this:
Regardless, his work as a graffiti artist has superceded that of many followers, bridging the gap between what is art and what is vandalism.
Fucked up as it is, the debate for vandalism always wins.
From the artbistro.com news site:
Barack Obama Artist Jailed
BOSTON BLITZ: stickers and posters by Shepard Fairey are plastered near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Newbury Street.
O’Ryan Johnson
February 07, 2009
Boston, MA – Arrest adds to Shepard Fairey’s tale.
The graffiti artist who rocketed to fame with an iconic portrait of President Obama was released yesterday after spending a night in jail when he ran afoul of Hub cops unimpressed by his media blitz.
Frank Shepard Fairey, 38, of Los Angeles was arrested Friday night for tagging a Massachusetts Turnpike building, police said.
Shepard Fairey walks by his most famous work, ‘Obama HOPE, 2008’ while giving a tour to the media Tuesday.
“Given his popularity, the suspect, prior to his exhibit, was interviewed by various media outlets in Boston and on a nationwide scale,” a police report states. “In several of these interviews, suspect spoke openly about illegally tagging. Suspect further acknowledged or admitted to recent tagging in Boston.”
Cops said they tracked down Fairey’s signature tag – a portrait of famed wrestler Andre the Giant over the word “Obey” – at several places throughout the city, including on a Massachusetts Turnpike utility building.
After his arrest, police discovered Fairey had a default warrant dating back to September 2000 for failing to appear in court on a tagging charge in Brighton.
He was released on $1,500 cash bail yesterday morning, police said. He is due to appear in Brighton District Court tomorrow morning, said Suffolk District Attorney’s Office spokesman Jake Wark. He faces an additional tagging charge in Roxbury for the Pike graffiti, police said.Fairey – whose show, “Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand,” began Friday at the Institute of Contemporary Art – has stoked his countercultural image while making the media rounds, noting he has been arrested more than a dozen times. He was picked up by Boston police about 9:15 p.m. while walking into an event he was supposed to DJ at the ICA, cops said.
The museum defended Fairey’s reputation in a statement, noting his sold-out Massachusetts speaking engagments and a huge Fairey mural on the side of City Hall.
“We believe Shepard Fairey has made an important contribution in the history of art and to popular thinking about art and its role in society,” the museum stated. “We are enthusiastic to be working with him and are pleased to be showing the first museum retrospective of his work.”
Fairey’s red-white-and-blue Obama portrait was featured on hundreds of thousands of pins, stickers and posters during the campaign, and a mixed-media version is now part of the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
Fairey made headlines earlier last week when The Associated Press filed suit against him for basing his work on a copyrighted Obama photo.
Fairey “was completely unaware there were any warrants for his arrest. Had he known, he would have resolved all such issues before the opening of his art exhibit” at the ICA, his attorney, Jeffrey Wiesner, said in an e-mail.
[ g: Irony: Not just for pleats.]
No comments:
Post a Comment