Shepard Fairey Controversy
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- acescence0
b b but i've got real talent! look at how fucking life-like these palm trees are! i'm old and i deserve to be rich too!! waaaa waaaa
- eieio0
i don't understand why he didn't just make his own portrait of obama, its not hard to simply reference a photo and change it
- madirish0
Shepard Fairey was 25....... once.
- juhls0
His work used to be better. Not saying it was the greatest stuff, but it was "new" for some people. Now it's horrible. He takes images from within his older posters and makes them into posters. Then sells them. Rinse. Repeat. There is hardly an effort now.
- I liked his stuff circa 97-98, when I worked in downtown San Diego, and his Obey/BLKMRKT posters were everywhere.DRIFTMONKEY
- handsomeboy0
his QBN talk had nothing in it, nothing interesting in the way of content (it came off like a summary of chapter 1 of his OBEY book) - however i was watching the video of it, I wasn't actually there so I assume he gave a full talk and the video is just a really edited down snippet?
I am surprised no one has brought up the OBEY vs FUCT designs.
- Yes, that video was edited by QBN. You had to have been there to see the whole thing (I wasn't there).Jaline
- ukit0
Yeah but Chief I think the main point of the article was that he used other people's artwork without credit, in fact over the original artists' objections in a few cases. Sure, sounds like this guy is out for him for some reason but that's worth bringing up isn't it?
- kelpie0
I'm about a third of the way through the artivle and the writers tone is so overbearingly superior that I am siding with Fairey on principle.
what a pompous dick.
- acescence0
if it's plagiarism then legal action could be taken, but it would possibly be ruled derivitive and not strictly plagiarised, but to phrase it that way certainly frames him nicely like a "criminal" getting "rich" off of the labor of others.
- Chief0
duchamp, rauschenberg, johns, warhol all appropriated images, materials, and objects. explain to me the difference. was it the fact they were all capable of painting/drawing? or maybe that fairey chooses imagery not quite as famous or as easily recognizable as lichtenstein? where did lichtenstein give credit to the images he was "inspired" by? i don't remember that being something we spoke too much about in art history courses. i didn't get a chance to read the entire article; i'll finish it up later tonight.
- also, wasn't/isn't iso50 doing the same sort of thing?Chief
- Jaline0
I agree with ukit.
It shouldn't be a big deal that Mark Vallen is calling Shepard Fairey out, especially when he (Vallen) can make a good case for himself. I don't mind reading it as long as it makes sense and is thought-provoking. I'm not sure where I fall in this argument (because whatever art is, it's subjective), but people should stop getting so defensive about questioning an artist. More people should be questioning things.
- ukit0
I think this shows how the "copyright" racket actually works though. For a while Fairey was the hot new kid on the block, and the objections of people who said he ripped their work were kind of tossed to the side, because he was rich/successful enough to not care. You could make an argument that he was sampling/ appropriating/ etc but there's no doubt that what he did was technically "illegal" in some instances.
Then he made the mistake of messing with a dog bigger than himself, and now you see the result. But that doesn't make it any more right that the AP can bring Shepard to his knees with a lawsuit than it was that he could make a living and become famous off the works of others.
- quagmire0
i think what ticked off the author was the general source material shepard fairey was deriving his work from.
- designerror0
last post on this page
- flavorful0
21 Jump Street.
- Jaline0
I'm bored too.
- ukit0
The Number 23
- DoktorDavid0
I had the good fortune of seeing Fairey's work at the show in Boston this past August and then seeing some of Rauschenberg's and Motherwell's in New York the next day. If Fairey owes anyone some props these two guys will suffice. What Fairey has been doing (and doing pretty well for a number years) is playing with easily accessible material and then applying his own particular point of view and technique to convey the image he wants us to experience. Sometimes it is cropped, flipped and augmented then serigraphed; sometimes it is via spray paint and stencils; sometimes through a shit load of xerography and wheat paste and lord knows what else. This is not plagiarism - this is collage.
- admonkey0
Mark Vallen is simply trying to jumpstart his go-nowhere career by bashing someone who actually HAS one. It's a time-honored tradition among the second-rate and failing. The fact that he passed out literature-- including HIS OWN ART-- amongst those standing in line at Fairey's show ought to tell you he's simply an opportunist out to raise his own profile. If he were truly interested in constructive dialogue he would have picked up the phone and made the local call to Fairey to ask him about it. Then, if he wasn't satisfied with the answers-- or at least wanted to include them-- he could have offered up the other side of the coin. Instead, he posted a shrill call of "Look at Me!" in hopes of selling a few more canvases of his Jr. High caliber artwork. Pretty sad, really.