Obama's On-the-Wall Endorsement: Shepard Fairey's "agitprop pop art" Obama poster

WP: Obama's On-the-Wall Endorsement
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 18, 2008; Page M01


Shepard Fairey put his street-art sensibility to work for his candidate of choice, in hopes of "appealing to a younger, apathetic audience." (Jonathan Alcorn/WP)

LOS ANGELES -- When the street artist and guerrilla marketer Shepard Fairey got word from the Obama people that they would welcome his contribution to the campaign, he knew what he wanted to create: a phenomenon....

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Fairey has done his share of political art in the past. He did posters for Ralph Nader in 2000. In 2004, he did George W. Bush, depicting the president as a grinning vampire. In the weeks before Super Tuesday 2008, "I put out the word I wanted to do something for Obama," explains Fairey, through Yosi Sergant, a plugged-in "early adopter" publicist in Los Angeles who knew prominent Democrats in the Obama circle. "I didn't want to be an unwelcome distraction," Fairey explains. "I've been arrested," he says, referring to his graffiti work in public places. "I really want him to win, so I didn't want to do anything that would cause him problems." The Obama people, somewhat to his surprise, said go ahead. Who said, exactly? "You can assume this came from the highest levels," Fairey says. Indeed, the Obama campaign liked the posters so much it now sells them via the official campaign Web site store (for $70, and the supply is currently all sold out -- again).

To create his Obama poster (which he did in less than a week), Fairey grabbed a news photograph of the candidate off the Internet. He sought an Obama that looked presidential. "He is gazing off into the future, saying, 'I can guide you,' " is how Fairey reads the image. The artist then simplified the lines and geometry, employing a red, white and blue patriotic palette (which he plays with by making the white a beige and the blue a pastel shade). He uses a lot of red along with boldface words: PROGRESS or HOPE or CHANGE. "I wanted the poster to be recognizable as my work, and to be appealing to a younger, apathetic audience, yet tame enough not to be seen as radical or offensive to the more mainstream political participants," Fairey explains. "You want to create the most flattering shapes. Strong in the face of adversity. How the light falls beautifully. It's idealized."...

Fairey's artwork follows the style of his predecessors. His Obama posters (and lots of his commercial and fine art work) are reworkings of the techniques of revolutionary propagandists -- the bright colors, bold lettering, geometric simplicity, heroic poses -- the "art with a purpose" created by constructivists in the early Soviet Union, like Alexander Rodchenko and the Stenberg brothers, and by America's own Depression-era Works Projects Administration.

Not only has Fairey done Obama, but works on the walls of his studio and on his Web site include depictions of Sid Vicious, Bobby Seale, Chairman Mao, Noam Chomsky, Emiliano Zapata, Patty Hearst, Vladimir Lenin and Richard Nixon. Though Fairey is quoting revolutionary forms (meaning he is playing with Mao, not endorsing Mao), some observers see his Obama poster and think: reds. Writers for the Clout column in the Philadelphia Daily News said "the Soviet-style heroic Obama, the use of a single word HOPE" reminded them of George Orwell's "1984" and Big Brother. "There's an unequivocal sense of idol worship about the image," wrote op-ed columnist Meghan Daum in the Los Angeles Times, "a half-artsy, half-creepy genuflection that suggests the subject is (a) a Third World dictator whose rule is enmeshed in a seductive cult of personality; (b) a controversial American figure who's been assassinated; or (c) one of those people from a Warhol silkscreen that you don't recognize but assume to be important in an abstruse way."

Fairey rummages around on his desk and produces a letter from Obama himself. "Dear Shepard," the candidate writes. "I would like to thank you for using your talent in support of my campaign. The political messages involved in your work have encouraged Americans to believe they can help change the status quo. Your images have a profound effect on people, whether seen in a gallery or on a stop sign."...

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