Shepard Fairey
Shepard Fairey
Frank Shepard Faireyis 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"sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design, which appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGraphic Designer
Date of Birth15 February 1970
CityCharleston, SC
CountryUnited States of America
Propaganda has a negative connotation, which it partially deserves, but I think there is some propaganda that is very positive. I feel that if you can do something that gets people's attention, then maybe they'll go and find out more about the person.
Most campaigns rely on photographs because the moment you do something that is a graphic interpretation where any artistic license has been taken, I think a lot of people are scared that it's going to be perceived as propaganda.
When I think about how I want to reach an audience, I just wanted to make pieces that were inspired by something that gave me so much pleasure.
For me, there has always been a disconnect with the sort of elitist structure of the high-art world - and my distaste for that is at odds with my feeling that art should aspire to do great things.
I don't have this obsessive need to do street art all the time because it's already opened doors for me.
When you walk down the street and see something in a crazy spot, there's something powerful about that. The street will always be an important part of getting art out there for me.
I admire Ai Weiwei for his art and his activism. His art is beautiful in form, and in function embodies the principles of populism and social consciousness I aspire to in my own practice.
Art shows and the institutions end up being the couriers for culture for the next generation and are an important component as well. It may seem ironic from one perspective, but I think if you look at my overall strategy, it's actually not out of step.
The problem with copyright enforcement is that when the parameters aren't incredibly well defined, it means big corporations, who have deeper pockets and better lawyers, can bully people.
I think the freedom to express one's views is more important than intellectual property.
I do think that copyrights and intellectual property are important - it's important to be able to keep people from making verbatim copies of a particular creation that could somehow hurt the creator. If I spend time conceiving and making a piece of art and somebody else sees that it has market value and replicates it in order to steal part of my market, then that's not cool.
Just because you've reached a certain level of success, that doesn't mean you've become corrupted by the system.
There's good and bad in every arena. It's funny, some people, the reason they're in the underground is because they're lazy and don't make things happen for themselves.
The Internet hasn't had a chance to really get to where people look at it with the proper level of scrutiny. There's so much bullshit on the Internet. It doesn't get filtered out because it's such a new medium.