Jail Time..Wah Wah

The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston hosted a 20 year retrospective of Fairey’s art on February 6, 2009 (quite impressive considering it came just nine days before his 39th birthday). Thousands showed up for opening night, including Fairey wearing an OBEY sweatshirt and carrying a stack of stickers. He was supposed to deejay the event, but didn’t even make it through the front door. Instead, PISSED OFF police were waiting outside with an unwelcome present – handcuffs. Even though he shared smiles with Boston’s mayor earlier in the week, Fairey was hauled off to jail and charged with the vandalism of buildings that he’d tagged much earlier in his career. Apparently the admission to a history of graffiti in the Boston area during the media blitz promoting the ICA show didn’t sit well with law enforcement. It was Fairey’s 15th and most sensational arrest. He’s fought the law before and vows that CENSORSHIP will never win.

“I’ve always gotten a rush from the idea that I’m doing something that you’re not supposed to do,” Fairey says. “I’m communicating with people when usually the corporations and government have all these forms of communication locked down. I still enjoy inspiring people to think they can express themselves any way they want. It’s so fulfilling knowing that anything I put up on the street is going to be seen by hundreds of thousands of people. Also because it’s illegal, I’m saying that I believe enough in what I’m doing to take a risk of getting arrested. The older I get, the more legal outs I have, but I still think it’s just as important to work both inside and outside the system. It’s not like I’ve been absorbed or co-opted, I will forever have the ability to say what I want on the street.”It’s influence that drives Shepard Fairey, much more than the projection of his image. His music posters praise revolutionaries and inspire people to LISTEN! Instead of promoting pretty sunsets, Fairey demands that we WAKE-UP to climate change. His message about Iraq: “Next time there’s a war for sale, it’s alright to say, ‘No thank you!’” Attacking politics as usual is usually what Fairey does, but in 2008, he saw HOPE on the horizon and created what became an iconic piece of art that had as much meat in the presidential election as a heaping pot of Oprah Winfrey’s chat stew.

One of the reasons “YES WE CAN” turned into “YES WE DID” elect our nation’s first African American president was Fairey’s Obama poster series. The red, white and blue images appeared on countless home windows, computer screens, billboards and street signs across the country. They became portraits of CHANGE, symbols of HOPE and PROGRESS reports on America’s dying prejudices. Voters associated the posters, and more importantly, Obama’s message, with strength, courage and leadership. In the end, Barack Obama, “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant,” stood before 1.8 million people on a frigid January afternoon and took our country’s most sacred oath.

Far less significant, but stunning in its own right, is the ride that street art took during the election. An often overlooked and marginalized subset of creative minds suddenly became RELEVANT and INFLUENTIAL to our mainstream culture. Fairey was already an urban LEGEND. He had been creating anti-Bush posters for years, and was no stranger to political art. But this election was different. Instead of REBELLING against government, he helped lead a REVOLUTION that believed in its potential. By definition Fairey’s Obama images were still propaganda, but because the thinking behind them was spun 180 degrees, they launched him and his genre into the artistic stratosphere. Fairey’s art made the front page of the New York Times, Esquire put one of his Obama images on its cover and Time commissioned its own version for the magazine’s “Person of the Year” issue. Fairey made GQ’s “2008 Men of the Year” list along with Obama, Michael Phelps, Sean Penn, the Boston Celtics and others. Then, the true indicator of Fairey’s success – a booking on “The Colbert Report.”

For as entertaining as his appearance on Comedy Central was, the connection between Obama and Fairey is even more amusing. That’s because Shepard’s rap sheet is nearly as many pages as the president’s economic stimulus package. While their methods may be different, the common bond that links the artist and politician is community ACTIVISM. Obama rallied for laid off factory workers in Chicago’s South Side and helped Bill Clinton carry Illinois in 1992 by registering 150,000 new voters. Fairey has donated his work, time and money to gay rights, animal adoption and energy efficiency causes, and his poster campaign, complete with video postcards, bumper stickers, t-shirts and other merchandise is credited with helping Obama reach The White House.