{"id":4865,"date":"2009-02-03T11:02:25","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T19:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/?p=4865"},"modified":"2009-02-03T11:06:35","modified_gmt":"2009-02-03T19:06:35","slug":"shepard-fairey-the-obvious-plagiarist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/?p=4865","title":{"rendered":"Shepard Fairey: The Obvious Plagiarist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/obey-red-china.gif\" onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/obey-red-china.gif','popup','width=338,height=232,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=yes,left=0,top=0');return false\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/obey-red-china-tm.jpg\" height=\"137\" width=\"200\" border=\"1\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"Obey Red China\" \/><\/a>One of modern art&#8217;s most persistent supporters is controversy. And <strong>Shepard Fairy<\/strong> has drummed up his fare share during his rise to fame as the Hope poster boy. <\/p>\n<p>LA Artist <strong>Mark Vallen&#8217;s<\/strong> has posted an essay titled <strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.art-for-a-change.com\/Obey\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey<\/a><\/em><\/strong><strong><em> <\/em><\/strong>in which he breaks down much of the Obey art and shows exactly where Shepard is boosting his images.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Fairey has developed a successful career through expropriating and recontextualizing the artworks of others, which in and of itself does not make for bad art. Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein based his paintings on the world of American comic strips and advertising imagery, but one was always aware that Lichtenstein was taking his images from comic books; that was after all the point, to examine the blas\u00e9 and artificial in modern American commercial culture. When Lichtenstein painted Look Mickey, a 1961 oil on canvas portrait of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, everyone was cognizant of the artist\u2019s source material &#8211; they were in on the joke. By contrast, Fairey simply filches artworks and hopes that no one notices &#8211; the joke is on you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We don&#8217;t disagree with Vallen, but appropriation is kind of Shepard&#8217;s whole point. And to miss that is to miss out completely on the &#8220;pop genius&#8221; of his work. Shepard did it. It caught on to something in pop culture and now he&#8217;s getting collected, shown, and paid. Isn&#8217;t that the way art is supposed to work?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Link: <\/strong><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.art-for-a-change.com\/Obey\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Vallen<\/a><\/strong><strong> via <\/strong><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/bostonglobe\/editorial_opinion\/outofline\/2009\/02\/how_phony_is_shepard_fairey.html\" target=\"_blank\">Boston.com<\/a><\/strong><strong>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of modern art&#8217;s most persistent supporters is controversy. And Shepard Fairy has drummed up his fare share during his rise to fame as the Hope poster boy. LA Artist Mark Vallen&#8217;s has posted an essay titled Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey in which he breaks down much of the Obey art and shows exactly where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4865"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4868,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865\/revisions\/4868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}