Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is an American contemporary artist, activist and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. Zittoun, Tania, Transitions: Symbolic Resources in Development, IAP, 2006, p168. In 1989, he designed the "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (...OBEY...) sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
Fairey designed the Barack Obama "Hope" poster for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, has described him as one of the best known and most influential street artists.Upcoming Exhibitions, SHEPARD FAIREY, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond; and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London."Local woman’s grandson behind the Obama “Hope” poster " , Independent, South Carolina
His style has been described as a "bold iconic style that is based on styling and idealizing images."
Early life Shepard Fairey was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. His father, Strait Fairey, is a doctor, and his mother, Charlotte, a realtor.Dottie Ashley, [Artist still challenges the status quo], The Post and Courier, August 22, 2010. Retrieved December 23, 2010. He attended Porter-Gaud School in Charleston and transferred to high school at Idyllwild Arts Academy in Idyllwild, California, from which he graduated in 1988.
Fairey became involved with art in 1984, when he started to place his drawings on skateboards and T-shirts. He moved to Rhode Island in 1988 to attend the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). In 1992, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration from RISD.
Career
"OBEY Giant" sticker
Fairey first created the "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" image in 1989, while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).Steven Heller, Véronique Vienne, Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility, Allworth Communications Inc., 2003, p223. In 2008 Fairey commented that: "The Andre the Giant sticker was just a spontaneous, happy accident. I was teaching a friend how to make stencils in the summer of 1989, and I looked for a picture to use in the newspaper, and there just happened to be an ad for wrestling with André the Giant and I told him that he should make a stencil of it. He said 'Nah, I’m not making a stencil of that, that’s stupid!' but I thought it was funny so I made the stencil and I made a few stickers and the group of guys I was hanging out with always called each other The Posse, so it said Andre the Giant Has a Posse, and it was sort of appropriated from hip-hop slang – Public Enemy, N.W.A and Ice-T were all using the word."Kobi Annobil, Shepard Fairey, 'Format Magazine', January 21, 2008 "The Andre the Giant sticker was just a spontaneous, happy accident. I was teaching a friend how to make stencils in the summer of 1989, and I looked for a picture to use in the newspaper, and there just happened to be an ad for wrestling with André the Giant and I told him that he should make a stencil of it. He said 'Nah, I’m not making a stencil of that, that’s stupid!' but I thought it was funny so I made the stencil and I made a few stickers and the group of guys I was hanging out with always called each other The Posse, so it said Andre the Giant Has a Posse, and it was sort of appropriated from hip-hop slang – Public Enemy, N.W.A and Ice-T were all using the word."
In 1996,Shepard Fairey interview in Tattoo Magazine, 1999. Fairey altered the image of André the Giant and changed the text to read OBEY, which Fairey has described as being a "transition ...into something that had more of an Orwellian connotation".Shepard Fairey, "Supply & Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey", pg. 35. It is this new image with the text "OBEY" which has become a worldwide phenomenon.
The "Obey Giant" image was also put up on the streets in posters, stencils and stickers via a campaign from an international network of collaborators as well as by people who had no connection to Fairey but were interested in putting the image on the streets.Ian Noble, Picture Perfect: Fusions of Illustration & Design, Rotovision, 2003, pp 128–129. The Obey Giant image was for Fairey something that would inspire curiosity and cause people to question their relationship with their surroundings and according to the Obey Giant website, "The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker". The website also says, by contrast, that those who are familiar with the sticker find humor and enjoyment from it and that those who try to analyze its meaning only burden themselves and may condemn the art as an act of vandalism from an evil, underground cult.
Originally intending the sticker campaign to gain fame among his classmates and college peers, Fairey says: At first I was only thinking about the response from my clique of art school and skateboard friends. The fact that a larger segment of the public would not only notice, but investigate, the unexplained appearance of the stickers was something I had not contemplated. When I started to see reactions and consider the sociological forces at work surrounding the use of public space and the insertion of a very eye-catching but ambiguous image, I began to think there was the potential to create a phenomenon.
In a manifesto he wrote between 1990 and 1991, and since posted on his website, he links his work with Heidegger's concept of phenomenology.Steven Heller, Véronique Vienne, Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility, Allworth Communications Inc., 2003, p224. His "Obey" Campaign is from the John Carpenter movie They Live which starred pro wrestler Roddy Piper, taking a number of its slogans, including the "Obey" slogan, as well as the "This is Your God" slogan. Fairey has spun off the OBEY clothing line from the original sticker campaign. He also uses the slogan "The Medium is the Message" borrowed from Marshall McLuhan. Shepard Fairey has stated in an interview that part of his work is inspired by other street artists.
"OBEY Giant" image
Post-graduation After graduation, he founded a small printing business in Providence, Rhode Island, called Alternate Graphics, specializing in T-shirt and sticker silkscreens, which afforded Fairey the ability to continue pursuing his own artwork. While residing in Providence in 1994, Fairey met American filmmaker Helen Stickler, who had also attended RISD and graduated with a film degree. The following spring, Stickler completed a short documentary film about Shepard and his work, titled "Andre the Giant Has a Posse". The film premiered in the 1995 New York Underground Film Festival and went on to play at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. It has been seen in more than 70 festivals and museums internationally.
"From the late ’90s until about 2001," writes Ken Leighton in The San Diego Reader, Fairey lived in East Village, San Diego, where, according to a friend quoted in the article, he co-founded a "guerrilla marketing company called Black Market Design." According to John Goff, a former member of the San Diego-based "tribal post-punk" industrial-noise performance art band Crash Worship, Fairey began appropriating the Russian Constructivist style utilized in Soviet-era propaganda during his time in San Diego. "'I think he became an art icon when he started focusing on Communist imagery,' Goff says. 'He was still in San Diego then. I first met him when he was working above Hooter’s in the Gaslamp.'"
Fairey was a founding partner, along with Dave Kinsey and Phillip DeWolff, of the design studio BLK/MRKT Inc. from 1997 to 2003, which specialized in guerrilla marketing, and "the development of high-impact marketing campaigns".Steven Heller, Véronique Vienne, Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility, Allworth Communications Inc., 2003, p225. Clients included Pepsi, Hasbro and Netscape for whom Fairey designed the red dinosaur version of mozilla.org's logo and mascot.
In 2003, he founded the Studio Number One design agency with his wife, Amanda Fairey. The agency produced the cover work for The Black Eyed Peas' album Monkey Business and the poster for the film Walk the Line. Fairey has also designed the covers for The Smashing Pumpkins' album Zeitgeist, Flogging Molly's CD/DVD Whiskey on a Sunday, Led Zeppelin's compilation Mothership and movie Celebration Day, and Anthrax's The Greater Of Two Evils. Along with Banksy, Dmote, and others, Fairey created work at a warehouse exhibition in Alexandria, Sydney, for Semi-Permanent in 2003. Approximately 1,500 people attended.
In 2004, Fairey joined artists Robbie Conal and Mear One to create a series of "anti-war, anti-Bush" posters for a street art campaign called "Be the Revolution" for the art collective "Post Gen". "Be the Revolution" kicked off with a night of performances featuring Z-Trip, Ozomatli, and David J at the Avalon in Hollywood. Fairey also co-founded Swindle Magazine along with Roger Gastman.
In 2005, he collaborated for a second time with Z-Trip on a limited edition 12-inch featuring Chuck D titled "Shock and Awe". In 2005 Fairey also collaborated with DJ Shadow on a box set, with T-shirts, stickers, prints, and a mix CD by Shadow. In 2005 he showed abroad, for instance in Paris at the Magda Danysz Gallery, and was a resident artist at the Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House (formerly known as The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu). Also in 2005, Fairey contributed the artwork for the posters, cover art, and graphics for Walk The Line, the Johnny Cash biopic. In 2006, Fairey contributed eight vinyl etchings to a limited-edition series of 12" singles by post-punk band Mission of Burma. He has also done work for the musical group Interpol.
In 2006, Fairey joined NYC based Ad agency Project 2050 as founding Creative Director and was featured on the cover of Advertising Age magazine. While at Project 2050, Shepard developed creative work for Virgin Mega Store and Boost Mobile. The book Supply and Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey was released in 2006. In 2008, Philosophy of Obey (Obey Giant): The Formative Years (1989–2008), edited by Sarah Jaye Williams, was published by Nerve Books UK, and praised by Fairey."The philosophy of Obey", obeygiant.com. Retrieved July 16, 2008.
In June 2007, Fairey opened his one-man show titled "E Pluribus Venom" at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. The show made the arts section front page in the New York Times.
Fairey donated original cover art to the 2008 album Body of War: Songs That Inspired an Iraq War Veteran, produced for Iraq War documentary Body of War. Proceeds from the album benefit non-profit organization Iraq Veterans Against the War.
In 2008, Fairey teamed up again with Z-Trip to do a series of shows in support of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama titled Party For Change. Fairey also designed posters for the British goth band Bauhaus.
In September 2008, Shepard opened his solo show titled "Duality of Humanity" at White Walls & Shooting Gallery in San Francisco. His third solo show with the gallery featured one hundred and fifty works, including the largest collection of his canvas pieces in one show.
Fairey was arrested on February 7, 2009, on his way to the premiere of his show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Massachusetts, on two outstanding warrants related to graffiti. He was charged with damage to property for having postered two Boston area locations with graffiti, a Boston Police Department spokesman said. His arrest was announced to partygoers by longtime friend Z-Trip, who had been performing at the ICA premiere at Fairey's request.