Review of Shepard Fairey

          I will be reviewing the work of Shepard Fairey. His work interested me because I have seen it a couple times before, and is quite popular. He is a street artist/graphic designer, and founder of the popular brand, OBEY. He is also well known for the image of former United States president, Barack Obama with the word "Hope," depicted below him. Fairy appears to be against violence, and many of his works are propaganda pieces.

          Shepard Fairey seems to have an overall political style to his work, due to a lot of "world peace" messages being in his designs. Because of this, it can be speculated that Shepard Fairey is a pacifist, who's mission is spreading hope and love through his art. I think that this is important, as his messages, expressing his opinion, will be seen often, due to his high popularity status, and should hopefully touch base with certain people. His passive opinion is shared through the constant use of words in his art work like, "peace," "hope," and "protect."

          The portfolio of Shepard Fairey includes most, if not all political propaganda for world peace. It's interesting how that is all that he included only political work, but that makes sense, considering that is what his work is centered around.

               

          The common theme of the work of Shepard Fairey is anti-violence, and world peace, in most of his art. Many vibrant colors and big lettering are seen throughout the works to grab people's attention, and to express his feelings. In some photos, he shows things that are opposite. For instance, a grenade depicted to look like the Earth, with the caption "Give the planet the royal-treatment!" This is indicating that Fairey is saying to take care of the Earth, instead of destroying it. Another example is a photo of a person holding an AK-47 with the title, "Wage Peace Obey." This indicates that people should stop fighting and murdering others.

          A prime example of Fairey’s work is his Barack Obama “hope” poster. It stood out to me because I’ve seen this particular work in many places before, along with parodies, such as in Battlefront II as Imperial propaganda with Galactic Emporer Palpatine’s face; and due to the fact that he only used 4-5 colors, yet still made it viberant and easily visible. I believe it was created to show support for former United States president Barack Obama during his 2 four year terms. I believe that this work of art is supposed to spread the message that Obama is to bring us hope and help the people of the United States and elsewhere, judging by the determined look on Obama's face, and the caption, along with the colors. I think that Fairey was trying to gear his work towards the American People as his audience, as they are the ones who vote, and are more likely to see this art, and then go vote. I think that his message was effective, as it has become very popular as it is seen often, and even gained the attention of The Associated Press, who were the ones that took the photo that Fairey's work is based off of. They filed a lawsuit against Fairey for using their photo without proper authorization, but ended up agreeing to work together in the future and both deciding to share the rights to the image along with its merchandise, and to collaborate on making more work from other AP photos.

          In the Obama hope poster, and other works of his, such as Andre The Giant, Fairey takes an image of a face of a famous celebrity and captions it. These works of Fairey grab my attention and speak to me as they are short, and straight to the point, and his message isn't dragged out endlessly, but rather, are easy to understand. I like Fairey's work and the messages he is trying to convey, and wish he would make more art like the Hope poster, that is quick to identify and understand the meaning to.