The Difference Between Propaganda and Street Art in Shepard Fairey's Work

Shepard Fairey is a very influential graphic designer, who was born on February the 15th in 1970, in the state South Carolina, in the United States. He went to the idyllwild arts academy in Palm Springs, California in 1988. In 1992 he then got his Bachelor degree in Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of design in Providence. The Rhode Island school is very famous and has a very impressive alumni including, Jessica Walsh, Seth MacFarlane, James Franco and various member of the Talking Heads band. Some of his early works were used on t-shirts and skateboards as this is something he was very obsessed with, he worked part time in a skateboarding shop which helped to fuel his love for skateboarding. Fairey really seemed to enjoy street art and the graffiti movement which influenced him a lot including his love for punk rock music. He was a rebellious child that was frustrated with school and rules in life, this stemmed from the fact that his parents were both very popular in school and he was sent to a preppy school where he felt he didn’t fit in at all. He says that when he discovered skateboarding and punk rock, which at the time were very anti-mainstream which gave him an outlet for his creativity, which led him to creating stickers and stencils. This started as a joke with friends and to mark their territory, but it developed into so much more which will be gone through in more detail further on. (Streetartbio.com, n.d.)

Fairey started making some stickers of the French wrestler André René Roussimoff also known as André the Giant in 1989 with some of his punk rock friends, which he said was just goofing around. He wanted to teach his friend how to make a stencil, he did this whilst looking through a newspaper for a piece, he found an advert for wrestling that featured André the Giant and said “try this”. The sticker used the quote “Andre the Giant Has a Posse”. He used to go around and paste the stickers and posters over buildings and signs for his friends to recognise. He soon realised that the stickers were getting recognised by the public, which was raising issues of the control of public space, this caused him to be arrested at least 18 times with many fines and some jail time. While he was in jail he was denied his insulin medication for his diabetes on at least 3 different occasions. The way that he has been treated in the justice system is also a reason why he questions authority as he believes that there is an abuse of power. All of this lead him to realise that disrupting the semiotics of this was really powerful and provocative (How can street art change the world? - Shepard Fairey of Obey Giant, 2019)

Fairey later launched his brand called OBEY Giant which sold a range of clothing, accessories, stickers and more which gained him huge success. Fairey said that he measures his success by how people react to it and how much attention it gets. (SoldArt.com, n.d.) The OBEY sticker campaign was an experiment in phenomenology, which is the process of letting things manifest themselves. “Phenomenology tries to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured: things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation.” This was a theory established by Edmund Husserl. OBEY says how people are not used to seeing adverts or propaganda where the motive is not obvious, as the sticker has no meaning but exists only to get a reaction and to get people to search for a meaning, when OBEY actually has no meaning. The reaction that people get reflects their personality, this has caused people to be happy with the stickers and on the other hand has annoyed a lot of people. This has meant that it has caused them to remove the stickers as they only see it as vandalism. The Giant sticker has been embraced by people who are rebellious and enjoy its slightly disruptive underground quality. Fairey also says how whether the reaction is positive or negative as long as the stickers are causing people to consider the details and meanings then it is worthy of existence. (Fairey, 1990)

Fairey was interested in political affairs from when he was young as he has always struggled to conform with society and the ‘correct’ ideals. He read the books 1984 which is based upon Big Brother and monitoring society, Fahrenheit 451 which is about a dystopian society that burns books in order to control people. These two books influenced his passion for political work as he wasn’t someone who wanted to just be part of the system, but someone who wanted to rebel and question conformity systems of oppression. His main inspiration for his OBEY work was when he saw the film ‘They Live’, which was a John Carpenter movie with the word OBEY along with other words in the set design. The word OBEY stuck out to him, where people follow the path that they are told to and what way to do things with societies expectations. He felt using the word OBEY was a way of getting them to question the agenda of everything they are confronted with. He was protesting George W Bush’s agenda and the Iraq War, when Barack Obama gave a speech in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) where he hadn’t been in politics for very long. Fairey was very interested in this speech and fuelled him to support Obama instead of just protesting against other people. (How can street art change the world? - Shepard Fairey of Obey Giant, 2019)

In 2008 Fairey designed a portrait of Barack Obama for his presidential campaign. Fairey was impressed with Obama and respected his views, so he was happy to hear that Obama was running for president. He wanted to help Obama by producing some artwork for him, but he was scared that his reputation as a street artist could be a problem for him. Luckily for Fairey he was given the permission from the Obama campaign on the 22nd of January in 2008. He was given permission after the campaign saw how much publicity his illustration was getting. At this time Obama was behind with several democratic states favouring fellow democrat candidate Hilary Clinton, which meant that if he wanted to help he had to do so very quickly. He said that he needed to portray Obama as an exciting, progressive patriot with vision. He decided to use the red, white and blue colour palette to show that he was patriotic, he also used a classic political pose that would help elevate him to an iconic status and make him feel established, familiar, American and presidential. The inspiration for the pose was taken from the famous piece of John F. Kennedy which was also very famous. He created this piece in a single day and sent it straight to production. For the piece he used a mix of digital and traditional techniques including editing the photo, screen printing, illustrating and manipulated digitally to finish. The poster was made of three colours so that it would be streamlined and iconic, with the benefit of easy reproduction. Only 700 posters were printed and only 350 were sold while the others were put up in public. The word Progress was used on the poster to help compliment the artwork and appeal to a progressive audience, Obama was concerned about the connotations it would have. So when Fairey worked with the campaign they asked him to change the word to hope or change, as these were prevalent throughout their campaign and progress did not fit. Fairey then printed another 4,000 posters with the proceeds from the original sales, which were then distributed to Obama rallies. The poster was posted to his website where the demand for the piece was massive so throughout the time of Obama’s campaign 350,000 posters and 500,000 stickers were produced. The portrait is known as one of if not the most recognised symbol of the Obama campaign.(Scott, 2017)

Starting from when he was a child Fairey has always fought against the rules and felt like he didn’t fit in and didn’t want to conform to societies rules. He started his most famous piece when he was young with his friends as a little joke, which turned into an extremely famous piece with lots of success. His OBEY brand has grown and grown over the years into a massive company. He is a very influential designer with his range of works that people are still inspired by today and hope to recreate. His work for Obama’s campaign is what put him on the map worldwide and really lifted him to fame. His work has influenced how propaganda has looked since, with lots of artworks using the same colour schemes, poses and simplicity of his piece. Although he has not really spoke about how his work is influenced very much, it is very clear how he has been influenced by Russian Constructivism and Rodchenko. Fairey is still well known today as the man who shaped propaganda and the world of street art, he is still a very strong presence in the propaganda and street art scene. Fairey is still designing murals and propaganda pieces all over the world and doing interviews for lots of different publications.

There are a lot of pieces of work that are designed in the same style as Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster. I found two pieces by two different artists that are illustrations of Marilyn Monroe and Spock from star trek. They have both been designed in Fairey’s style with the red, white and blue colour scheme using simple shapes to add shading in the same way that Fairey would. They have also used the bold text on the bottom of the posters to compliment the illustrations. Although a lot of these are very good they are not as good as his original pieces. There is just something about the way he uses the colours and shapes to create the shadows that other people can not replicate.

Overall I feel that without the work that was designed by Fairey, both propaganda and street art would look completely different. I believe that a lot of street artists have been influenced in some way by his work; he is known for a lot of his different works as he was one of the main viral street artists that has transitioned over to more of a gallery based artist. Moreover he has influenced me as a graphic designer as I like his bold use of colour and layout.