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The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery this week announced that they have acquired Shephard Fairey's collage portrait of Obama that was a defining image of his campaign. "This is the original collage that the prints and campaign materials were based on," museum spokeswoman Bethany Bentley said in an email to Jesus Sanchez at The Eastsider LA, a blog devoted to the city's region where Fairey's studio and gallery resides.
The five-foot-tall artwork was donated to the museum by local Washington D.C. collectors Heather and Tony Podesta, whose brother heads up the transition team for Obama. It was bought for an undisclosed amount of money and will be on display in time for the inauguration.
In related Obama-Shepard news, the new inauguration poster (above right) is now available. "If anyone is realizing the marketing potential of Barack Obama, it is Mr. Obama’s marketers themselves," observed the New York Times. "After all, Advertising Age, the bible of Madison Avenue, named the Obama campaign 'Marketer of the Year' last fall, citing in particular its ability to brand itself. Obama beat out marketing heavyweights like Apple, Nike and Coors. And that was before he got elected."
And purely on the Shepard side of things, Saks Fifth Avenue had him design its catalog covers and shopping bags (photos below):
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Fairey doing Saks bags?! Anyone remember when he used to be anti-establishment?
I gotta agree with Purp on this one. It's always tough when you get so popular you start to become the thing you hated at the beginning.
Shepard Fairey has, as much as I can recall, never been anti-establishment. His design studio back in the late 90s worked with Pepsi on creating a guerilla-style ad campaign; he helped Nike launch one of their shoe lines (I think it was for Carmelo Anthony back in the day, but can't remember for sure); he's said repeatedly in interviews that he's not anti-capitalist and has no problem with working with big corporate clients, etc. Doing work for Saks is completely consistent with his prior affiliations.
And, just as a sidenote, endorsing, and doing work on behalf of, one of the two major political party leaders is not exactly anti-establishment neither.
If you open any of the anthologies of his artwork, early on it was very anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, and anti-capitalist.
From a critics review of his "E Pluribus Venom" showing:
It's hard to find a lot of his older stuff online, but a few examples:http://www.neublack.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/shepard_fairey_3.jpg
http://www.theworldsbestever.com/2007/08/07/OPERATION-OIL-FREEDOM-Gold.jpg
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e158/mcnail/OMG/COST-OF-OIL-FINAL.jpg
http://obeygiant.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/eplurbisvenomfront.png
http://theworldsbestever.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/shepard-fairey-tyrant-boot-poster.jpg
http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/culture/2006/04/03/visualart30_ph3331x500.jpg
Oh, yeah, I definitely remember these. But, while these and others like it have a message of anti-something -i.e., political art - I never really thought of Fairey as himself completely anti-establishment. He sees problems with the system and creates his art around those problems; he's not actually for dismantling it all completely.
Oh, here's a good interview with a lot of his early and current work - some of which you pointed to, Purp.
Seen But Not Heard - Shepard Fairey
Well...
I know you'll hate me for saying this, I know it's beautiful art (it is), I know Obama's a nice guy and I know I'm one of those evil Republicans y'all hate with a passion (but give me points for voting NO big time on Prop 8 and being part of the Republicans Against 8 Coalition) BUT - I am not comfortable with creating "graven" images of politicians - of any stripe - like this. A campaign button, their photo in the Passport Office, or even a commemorative plate is okay but these posters remind me a lot of this:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a62/skyyguyy73/lenin.jpg
I would say the same thing if someone had done the same thing for McCain and God forbid when a rockstar Republican comes around (it will happen, for every action there's a reaction) I will be equally unnerved if they try the same thing.
Sorry.
I do not look forward to the day of a "rockstar Republican."
There's already been a rockstar Republican. Lee Atwater fits the bill perfectly. After he put together ideas for negative campaigns against opponents he'd pick up a electric guitar and entertain. Who is Lee Atwater? He was (died of brain cancer) Karl Rove's mentor.
Atwater: "You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites."
I'm guessing you read the Conservapedia where they compared the Obama poster to the Lenin one to "prove" he was a socialist?
I don't think there's anything wrong with an iconic representation of a figurehead, but I can understand your hesitancy especially considering the way it has been used throughout history, Mao is a good example of it being bad.
I also think it's good to keep a critical eye on political figures, Obama included, and so creating a symbol of him is dangerous in that it could one day mean things that aren't true. It isn't necesarily bad though and I think Obama's symbol represented a lot of good things during the campaign.
Oh, and, they already did make one of McCain: http://meaningfuldistractions.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/mccain-emblem-16.jpg
and shepard is going to be on the colbert report this friday.
http://obeygiant.com