Text and Image Essay

Investigating ways in which Shepard Fairley displays his message through his images combined with text

In this essay I will be analysing a piece of contemporary art that combines image and text. I have chosen to write about the artist, graphic designer and illustrator, Shepard Fairey. I will look at the relationship between image and text in a different genre, and discuss how this affects the message that the image and text will be sending out to people.

Shepard Fairey started his career in 1989 in providence, Rhode Island. In order to pay his tuition fees he worked in a skate shop where he used his skills and whatever else he could lay his hands on to make t-shirts, stickers and other things. To show one of his skater friends how easy it was to screen-print an image, he found a picture of the famous 80’s wrestler Andre the Giant and used the magazine picture to create a stencil he then went on to create stickers with: the now famous, Andre the Giant Has a Posse was born. The artist then started to gain viral success as people started to photocopy his stickers to cover skate parks, car bumpers, and many other places around. After using the Andre the Giant picture as a stencil, Obey would then make it into a poster in 1993, changing his entire style at the same time by sticking his paper creations on walls all around him. To stay clear of judicial trouble Shepard Fairey would pass his posters for promotion for musical artists and would never actually admit to it being art, for fear of being identified as a graffiti artist and therefore more heavily fined. After New York, Obey started to invade the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles or San Diego. In 1995 he would sign his creations with the word Obey for the first time. His artist name is inspired by John Carpenter’s ‘Invasion Los Angeles (They live)’ film, and is a way for him to reject the consumer society surrounding him and at the same time inspiring everyone to decrypt the messages we are sent on a daily basis; Obey also as a wakeup call to people who don’t realise they are acting as nice and disciplined people, unwittingly slaves to the orders they are given. Shepard Fairey has always declared himself close to the Heidegger philosophy and phenomenology, the art of awakening our sense of questioning our environment. He would then later choose to diversify his artistic support by creating his own brand: Obey Clothing which is basically just another means of communicating his art. Fairey printed a near exact copy of an already existing skull and crossbones artwork he found, altering the original design only by adding the words "OBEY: Defiant Since '89" along with a small star bearing the face of Andre the Giant. The image was reproduced as a T-shirt and added to Shepard Fairey’s OBEY fashion line. Wal-Mart also copied the designs and added it to the superstores own fashion line. However a shopper in Wal-Mart at the time recognised the skull motif’s origin and angrily protested - as it was an exact duplication of the infamous logo belonging to the Gestapo, the Nazi "secret state police" that served as personal bodyguards to Adolf Hitler and administered the concentration camps where the genocide of the Jewish people was put into practice. Wal-Mart’s T-shirts became a nationwide controversy, with legions of angry citizens insisting the superstore apologize and pull the offensive items from their shelves - a demand that was ultimately met. Eventually it came to light that Shepard Fairey was first responsible for manufacturing and selling the T-shirt, and when confronted by the website, consumerist.com, Fairey offered the following explanation: "When I made that graphic I was referencing a biker logo and it was only brought up to me later that it was the SS skull." He also DJ’s at clubs, using the name DJ Diabetic, or Emcee insulin, because he has diabetes. It was a long time before that it all developed into the ‘Obey Giant’ campaign, which has evolved by an international group of colleagues making copies and improving some of his original designs. In 2003, he founded the Studio Number One design agency; they then produced cover work for pop group Black Eyed Peas. He was also able to team up with artists Robbie Conal and Mear One to create a series of anti-war, anti-Bush posters for a street art campaign.

Shepard Fairey created a number of different posters; one included supporting Barack Obama’s candidacy for the president of the United States. Shepard Fairley’s propaganda messages and styles in his works to communicate his own messages quickly became one of his major traits. From the very first day, he was a socially conscious artist, always one to point the finger at social injustice, he constantly attracts the public’s eye with his bold style based on 3 colours: red, black and white, the most visual colours according to the artist himself. As can be expected, Shepard works a lot with aerosols and stencils. The way he then limits himself in the use of colours and still gets a lot of visual power is intimidating. His works show depth, urgency and intelligence.

Today, Obey, who wasn’t the most hardcore or even the most expensive of street artist is reaching all new heights thanks to Barack Obama’s election. The poster Obey was quickly picked up by internet and soon became more popular than any picture of the official campaign. The soon-to-be president’s campaign team then turned to the artist and asked if they could use the poster for the campaign. Fairey would then go on to send and stick it everywhere. His creation is so efficient and balanced that it is adopted by political websites as well as street culture blogs. Obey would obtain real acknowledgment after Obama went on to win the election: Fairley’s presidential portrait would make its way into the National Portrait Gallery of the prestigious and extremely formal Smithsonian Institution. The very first official portrait of the new President recognised by the biggest national cultural institution is the work of a street artist. Pop-art and street-art mingling with traditional pictures and codes. It’s extremely impressive and it may be a sign of more changes to come with Barack Obama’s inauguration. This is a huge landmark in an artistic culture more often considered as vandalism than creative genius.

This huge artistic event is also going to change the way street artist are considered for the years to come. If contemporary art had already shocked the crowds by selling works by Kaws, Futura, Jay One, for huge amounts of money, in a way bringing these underground artists into the spotlight, Obey’s crowning as an official artist is certainly going to have huge consequences on general institutional orders and therefore also on pop-street-art. Which also means that street-culture is going to change. Street-culture is becoming more and more essential but first and foremost it’s becoming less and less underground. Most marketing processes are making use of sneaker culture, street wear and street art. This is obviously good (economical) news, but is it a niche and elitist culture’s aim and destiny to become a popular and global reference? Also will this culture know how to manage this new-found fame?

In an interview Fairley did, he mentioned how an article said he had done a job for Mountain Dew and made a million dollars from the job, which he referred to as complete bull. The message has never been easy to express as critics always questions the motives of any designer and the message he's trying to get across. Fairley would love to get people to consume awareness of all the manipulations of capitalism, however he is not an anti-capitalist, and there is a big distinction there. For those who read everything in black and white saying no one should work for big corporations, he feels that the majority of themselves have been working for a company in the same system he has been. Fairey has taken on projects which have value to society as well as some projects which just happened to take up personal interests such as the new Smashing Pumpkins album cover. However he feels that he has more control in the way he chooses projects and the message he is able to get across through his work and that is a major factor within design that choice allows you to convey the right message while understanding our responsibilities in designing within this society.