Even Eggy the Ram wants to be a part of Shepard Fairey's posse.

Comic by Simone Lai

In 1989, Shepard Fairey distributed stickers throughout Rhode Island’s skater community. The sticker featured a stenciled photo of wrestler Andre the Giant, and was titled “Andre the Giant Has a Posse.” The image quickly turned into a viral marketing campaign. 

By the ’90s, tens of thousands of the stickers, photocopied and silkscreened, began appearing on stop signs, buildings, and sidewalks worldwide. This is the beginning of Obey — you know those T-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats, you wear that boast the slogan.

Fairey has effectively become another commercialized, commoditized “artist” ­— the epitome of an art sell out. Despite first remarking that the Obey slogan was a supposed “parody of propaganda,” Fairey has created a posse of his own by simplifying iconic imagery to make it accessible. In short, his clothing line is derivative propaganda.

Fairey branded himself as a household item when he created the “Hope,” poster during Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Appropriation and derivative art at its finest. He was later taken to court over the image in a claim of copyright infringement by The Associated Press. He was sentenced to two years of probation and 300 hours of community service. It’s my turn now to put him on artistic probation. 

The words “Obey” plastered below Andre the Giant’s post-processed face seems to attract a demographic of pseudo-artistic hipsters who aspire to feel connected to the elite world of art. 

Fairey has followed in the footsteps of Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol, whoring his art to the media. He creates consumer-driven pieces for wannabes, who pay to wear an art-based brand, attempting to use these images to compensate for their lack of understanding of the arts.

Like Warhol, Fairey’s uses pop culture references to capture the widest attention possible. Being a fan of these artists doesn’t make you a cultured sophisticate, but rather susceptible to the most obvious marketing schemes.

I don’t necessarily condone the practice of appropriation in the creation of art, but I do find Fairey extremely interesting as a social commentator. Fairey seems to poke fun at the blatantly disregarding nature of society, and their naïve minds, by labelling his company “Obey.” His followers grow in number.

“Another phenomenon the (Obey) sticker has brought to light is the trendy and conspicuously consumptive nature of many members of society,” Fairey writes on the clothing’s website. This line is reminiscent of the famous Warhol statement that proves the manipulation of society can be truly gratifying monetarily: “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

It doesn’t necessarily have to be one-of-a-kind to be labelled art, but there has been an attachment to the idea that art cannot be easily accessible. Creating art to be mass consumed effectively reduces the level of artistry in the creative process. 

An indefinite number of products changes the media from “art” to “object,” as in Fairey’s multiple platforms and detached levels of association to his product. 

In society’s technological revolution, people crave quantity over quality and accept being portrayed as cultured despite lack of accreditation. Fairey and similar-minded artists capitalize on this, though in the process they are changing and devaluing the ideals connected to “art.”

This story and comic were first published in The Ryersonian, a weekly newspaper produced by the Ryerson School of Journalism, on March 20, 2013.