In Defense of Shepard Fairey
Good article over at boston.com discussing Shepard Fairey and the history of artists appropriating preexisting work. Its a very timely and poignant article and well worth your time if you have ever found yourself questioning the legitamacy of artwork like Shepard Faireys.
Why would Shepard Fairey, or any other artist, want to copy an image that is already out there and claim it as his own? Why would he think he could get away with it?
Forget, for the moment, the legalities: The laws governing intellectual property rights are, after all, devilishly complex. And put aside, if you will, the unrelated issue of whether Fairey deserves to be arrested for vandalism. We can leave that to the defenders of private property – self-appointed and otherwise. It’s a serious issue; speaking as a disinterested aesthete, I would only say that, for the most part, I’d rather look at Fairey’s attractively designed posters than the brain-pounding ads for fast-food outlets and failing banks that currently dominate the urban environment.
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Along came Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein – both of whom routinely crop up in discussions of Fairey. Both treated preexisting images (comic strips in Lichtenstein’s case; advertisements in Warhol’s) as objects of wit and ironic play in ways that many found enormously appealing. Their work reflected an increasing savviness about visual signs on the part of the public – an ability to read them with skepticism and detachment even as one was seduced by them.
