When I first saw Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” poster, I liked it. That is until I found out the ugly truth behind most of his work (including the Obama promotional poster). It turns out that he is known for outright thieving other artists work and photos and creating his work from it. Check out Mark Vallen's critique for more info. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were made off the “Hope” poster. However, the photographer that took the original photo Fairey traced over (Mannie Garcia), has not been given a single cent.Fairey calls himself an "appropriation artist". For what Fairey does to be appropriation, he would have to be “borrowing” work from outside the “art community” to create something new. The original photographer's image was a work of art in its own right and was not changed by Fairey other than turning it into a graphic image. The only time this is enough is in the case of satire. He didn’t really change the meaning behind the image. He just traced over it in a computer program (probably Adobe Illustrator) and claimed it was his own. This is plagiarism.
Because of all this, I was inspired to create my own satirical version of the “Hope” poster. I call it "!Plagiarist". It is currently available for sale as a t-shirt on RedBubble.
For reference, I used a picture I found on the internet of Fairey. I don’t know the name of the photographer that took the picture of him, but fully intend to set aside 20% of all earnings from this image to give to them, should they come forward.
I toyed with a number of words to use before I settled on “plagiarist” and I’m still not 100% that I picked the best word. Some have suggested that people like Duchamp or Warhol are plagiarists in the same way that Fairey is. I wouldn’t consider Duchamp to be a plagiarist. What he did was challenge what the public perceived as art. Did he create the original work? Not really, but he did shed a new light on the everyday object. Warhol took what Duchamp did to the next level in a sense. He took the every day and shed a somewhat satirical light on it. Unfortunately, Warhol was also indirectly responsible for reality television and artists like Fairey.
You might be asking, "Didn't all the money he got from the sale of the "Hope" poster go to the Obama campaign?". Most of it did. However, the original artist should have still received a cut of the money to do with as they saw fit.
4 comments:
One could argue that Shepard Fairey is taking what Warhol did just like Warhol did with Duchamp. To be frank, most people who look at Fairey's work can understand it and at the same time not be bothered with the "thievery" because they don't know the "original" art work.
Thhe fact that he's making a lot of money doing what he does is not his doing however. He first and far most an artist, all be it a commercial one with very unconventional themes for commerce.
I believe it's a good thing and he does get people thinking.
He gave the Obama campaign an appropriate design, they would've paided the same money to another artist to do it if Fairey didn't do it. It helped to get people voting, everyone got inspired, everyone's happy that McCain didn't get elected. Now the only people who are criticising him are the ones who didn't come up with the idea in the first place. Trying to, at least, knock some money out of it with their criticism.
Obama supports him, Henry Rollins supports him, he's doing exactly what he set out to do and he's making good money out of it. Sounds like a pretty good deal for any artist, especially a street artist. More power to him. Sorry for the lengthy reply.
Shepard isn't a plagiarist. Nearly ever artist use photos as references. He turned a new photo of a public figure into a stylized vector drawing...
I'm truly surprised that the only responses I've gotten to the "!Plagiarist" image are from people actually defending Fairey. Did you not read Mark Vallen's critique? The man STOLE artwork from noted Cuban artists. He practically COPIED the death's head worn by the Nazi Gestapo that symbolized racism in the world. He outright TRACED a few Russian propaganda posters and the 1984 "Big Brother is Watching You" poster. And yes he even STOLE the image he used for the Obama "Hope" poster. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, plagiarism is described as, "To steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the source". Dictionary.com defines plagiarism as, "The unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work". Both of these definitions apply to artwork as well. What Shepard Fairey has done and continues to do is called PLAGIARISM. He refers to himself as an "appropriation artist" and some have suggested that I should have used the word "Appropriate" instead of "Plagiarist". The funny thing is that Dictionary.com also defines the verb appropriate as, "To take to or for oneself; take possession of. To take without permission or consent; seize; expropriate. To steal, esp. to commit petty theft". He essentially admits to being a THIEF and yet you praise him. I don't get it.
St0f,
The fact that many viewer's don't know the original work is the point of my creation of the satirical design in this post. What would you do if you created a work of art (whether it be a photograph, sculpture, painting, drawing, or whatever) and then had some so called "street artist" take your image, tweak it ever so slightly that the original meaning is lost, and then claim it as his own without crediting you? The fact that he is making a lot of money doing what he does is partially to blame with society as a whole, but to consider him blameless is foolish. It's interesting how being a plagiarist and a thief can still make you an "artist" and you are just considered "unconventional" in your themes. That's similar to saying Hitler wasn't a mass-murdering racist, he was first and foremost a leader. He just had "unconventional" themes for leading. Did Fairey give an appropriate design for the Obama campaign? Yes I think he did, but that doesn't excuse him for not contacting the original artist that took the photograph to get permission first. Especially since it was a work of commercial art. You need to get your facts straight though. The Obama campaign did not pay for the image, nor did they commission its creation. It was a piece that Fairey created for the campaign of his own accord (possibly just to rake in a few sacks of cash out of the deal). I criticize Fairey because I'm an artist, not because I didn't come up with the idea first. I guess I'm funny that way. Something about a two bit hack getting famous for stealing from other artists just doesn't sit well with me. I honestly could care less if I make a single red cent off of my design. The only reason I'm selling it is to raise awareness of Shepard Fairey's misdeeds and so that I can give some money to the original photographer that my image was based off of should they come forward asking about it.
n8i,
You are correct in stating that most artists these days use photos as reference. However, many of the honest artists will credit where the original image came from or alter it enough from its original design and meaning that they make it their own. The rest are called plagiarists. Simply turning a photo (that you did not take or get permission to use) directly into a vector drawing does not constitute enough of a change to bypass the fact that you are plagiarizing another artist's work of art.
One more thing. I admit that based on what I have said about Fairey could be applied to myself in the case of this image. I used a photograph taken by another artist as reference for this image and then placed it for sale without receiving permission from the original artist first. However, if the original artist were to come to me and ask for their cut of the money generated to date, I would hand it over without question. Also, if I were issued a "cease and desist" order from the photographer, I would happily comply. Then I would find another image by another photographer, get permission from them, and re-create the work. It's as simple as that.
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