Shepard Fairey
Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is an American contemporary street artist, graphic designer, activist, illustrator and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene.
He first became known for his "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (…OBEY…) sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), which appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News.
He became widely known during the 2008 U.S. presidential election for his Barack Obama "Hope" poster.
The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston has described him as one the best known and most influential street artists.
Fairey's first art museum exhibition, titled Supply & Demand (as was his earlier book), was held in Boston at the Institute of Contemporary Art during the summer of 2009. The exhibition featured more than 250 works in a wide variety of media: screen prints, stencils, stickers, rubylith illustrations, collages, and works on wood, metal and canvas. As a complement to the ICA exhibition, Fairey created public art works around Boston. The artist explains his driving motivation:
His work is included in the collections at:
- The Smithsonian,
- the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
- the Museum of Modern Art in New York City,
- the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego,
- the National Portrait Gallery in Washington,
- D.C.,
- the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond,
- the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
"The real message behind most of my work is 'question everything’.
Fairey created the "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign in 1989, while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
This later evolved into the "Obey Giant" campaign, which has grown via an international network of collaborators replicating Fairey's original designs. Fairey intended the Obey Giant to inspire curiosity and cause people to question their relationship with their surroundings. According to the Obey Giant website,"The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker".The website also says, by contrast, that those who are familiar with the sticker find humor and enjoyment from it and that those who try to analyze its meaning only burden themselves and may condemn the art as an act of vandalism from an evil, underground cult.
