Today, Shepard Fairy is known as the most prominent representative of pop art, a creative artist and graphic designer. He burst into the world of art with vivid and “speaking” paintings and immediately aroused a lot of controversy around him that has not subsided so far. The artist works under the pseudonym Obey, which means “obey”, “obey”, and all his work asks to listen to the world and peer into the surrounding realities. But skeptical critics are trying to convict the artist of deceit. Who is he: a master of plagiarism or an art revolutionary?
Biography
Shepard Fairy was born in Charleston (USA) in the family of a private doctor. But since childhood, he showed the abilities of a not quite ordinary child. He was fond of punk rock and DIY art (which means “do it yourself”). He made his first creative steps by painting friends' clothes and skateboards, already “arming” with a famous pseudonym.
At the age of 22, Shepard has a Rhode Island school of design in the fine arts class and several directions for choosing a creative path. Graphic design and music became the first step in the career ladder of the artist. After some time, Shepard's works are exhibited in Boston and immediately impress. The designer is associated with three styles: graffiti, pop and public art.
In 2003, Fairy opened her own design agency. Today, his work is included in the collections of several museums, art institutes in the United States and Great Britain.
Several times the artist was arrested for drawing graffiti in public places and putting up advertising posters.
Creation
As an artist, Shepard Fairy has always been distinguished by the ability to vividly and originally respond to what is happening in the world. His paintings are a reflection of ideological, religious, political and environmental problems. The world fame came to the artist in 2008 with a poster for the election campaign of Barack Obama. The creation received the symbolic name Hope (or "Hope"), which largely influenced the course of the elections.
Shepard Fairy immediately formed a unique creative style. His paintings are recognizable, in their color palette and style of execution reminiscent of Soviet posters. According to the artist himself, the work of Martin Heidegger and Alexander Rodchenko had a great influence on him .
Commercial design
For some time after graduating from design school, Fairy worked in a printing house and made stickers, stickers, posters and t-shirts of an advertising nature. Later, he switched to “partisan” marketing and realized himself in large-scale projects of Adidas and Pepsi. It is Fairy who owns the logo of the Mozilla Foundation, the creator of the Firefox browser. Also significant is the collaboration of the designer with the musical groups Black Eyed Peas and Smashing Pumkins, with whom he designed the album covers.
According to Fairy himself, the choice of products for advertising is carried out by him primarily from a moral point of view, and not commercial.
Graffiti
Least of all for colleagues and art lovers, Shepard Fairy showed himself in street art. However, his work in this direction also attracted attention. Graffiti artists say that Fairy skillfully and actively exploits popular social themes, but that still does not make him a master of street art. Graffiti-style Obey works are more like “guerrilla” marketing or advertising, which, of course, is far from street art. Simply put, they are not connected with the street, the interaction of space and people. Despite this assessment, Shepard Fairy often organizes exhibitions in galleries in Europe and the United States and always receives a warm welcome and attention to her work.
Criticism
On the creative path of Shepard Fairy was always restless and exciting. There are skeptical critics who seek and seem to find evidence of plagiarism of the artist's works. Among them are art historian Lincoln Cushing and artist Josh McPhee. Their doubts are caused by the style and forms that Shepard Fairy uses. His paintings, like photocopies, have neither clear lines, nor strokes. And the images used by the artist are beaten and familiar to everyone.
Any representative of art, one way or another, falls under the influence of predecessors. He adopts, rethinks, transforms and forms his own unique style. According to critics, Shepard only copies other people's works with minor changes and stylization and passes them off as his own. So, they often recall the scandal surrounding Shepard’s work on the wrestling star Andre Gigantu. After WWE threatened the artist with a lawsuit, accusing him of using a registered stamp, Fairy changed the portrait of the wrestler and the slogan to Obey. It is noteworthy that one of the options for the Andre the Giant in composition is similar to the Soviet poster of Dmitry Moor "Enrolled in volunteers?".
The cause of the lawsuit was Fairy's most famous work, Hope. Then the Associated Press agency accused the artist of using Obama’s 2006 photograph commissioned by the agency.
PS
The work of Shepard Fairy brings the designer profit and fame, accusations and arrests. But the Rhode Island School of Design can still be proud of its graduate. Indeed, despite all the suspicions and claims from the authorities and critics, Fairy was and remains a versatile, lively and fashionable artist. His work, if they did not change the world, then influenced the “public discourse”.