Shepard Fairey Obama Views

General Goods

I have to admit first to having creepy misgivings about the popularity of his Hope poster in the first place (I'm a libertarian, but I never thought of Obama as evil, mind you), but upon reading the backstory of Shepard Fairey, as an artist I find it difficult to defend him. The law as it applies to fair use can only bend to a certain extent (and I lean towards the remix culture, mind you), but given his history of just-nearly-outright-plagiarism, the weight of evidence in this case is pretty overwhelming in the context of a civil trial (preponderance of evidence). However, I feel for the guy because he did do the right thing admitting to lying. Good for him. Even though I think his art is not.

The Barack Obama Hope poster is an image of Barack Obama designed by artist Shepard Fairey, which was widely described as iconic and became synonymous with the 2008 Obama presidential campaign.[1][2] It consists of a stylized stencil portrait of Obama in solid red, white (actually beige) and (pastel and dark) blue, with the word progress , hope , or change below (and other things in some versions).

Shepard Fairey, who had created earlier political street art critical of government and of George W. Bush, discussed the nascent Obama campaign with publicist Yosi Sergant in late October 2007. Sergant suggested Fairey create some art in support of Obama. Sergant contacted the Obama campaign to seek its permission for Fairey to design an Obama poster, which was granted a few weeks before Super Tuesday. Fairey found a photograph of Obama using Google Image Search (eventually revealed to be an April 2006 photo by freelancer Mannie Garcia for The Associated Press)[4][5] and created the original poster design in a single day. The original image had the word progress and featured Fairey's signature obey star—a symbol associated with his Andre the Giant Has a Posse street art campaign—embedded in the Obama campaign's sunrise logo.[6]

Fairey created a similar but new image of Barack Obama for Time magazine, which was used as the cover art for the 2008 Person of the Year issue.[41] The original iconic HOPE portrait was featured on the cover of Esquire Magazine's February 2009 issue, this time with a caption reading, WHAT NOW? Shepard Fairey's influence throughout the presidential election was a factor in the artist himself having been named a Person of the Year for 2008 by GQ.