Obama as an art form
Barack Obama's face is throwing me into an existential tailspin. I'm talking about those red, cream and blue art posters all over town. If you don't know what I mean, take one look around a Trader Joe's parking lot, paying special attention to the rear windows of Priuses or bio-diesel vehicles, and I guarantee that you'll see one of these things on proud and ultra-hip display.
The posters, which depict a blocky, silk-screen-style image of Obama's shoulders and face, exist in a few versions, bearing the words "Hope," "Change" or "Progress."
The creator is Shepard Fairey, an L.A.-based artist and marketing designer who became known (to some people at least) in the early 1990s when he made stickers portraying a stenciled image of professional wrestler Andre the Giant. Capturing a style that might be described as Bolshevik constructivism meets skate-punk graffiti art, the stickers, which included the words "Obey Giant" and which he slapped on every surface he could find, quickly ascended to the realm of underground art phenomenon. Fairey, who's been arrested several times on charges of defacing billboards and other property, eventually parlayed the sticker enterprise into a not-so-underground T-shirt business.
Today, the concept of "obey" does double duty for Fairey as a business name as well as a sort of de facto free-ranging form of political protest. He sells his artwork through his own gallery as well as Obey Giant Art Inc. and licenses apparel though Obey Clothing. His website -- which sells stickers, posters and prints -- bills itself as an agent of "worldwide propaganda delivery."
The Obama poster has spread Fairey's fame, but is the image good for the candidate? Like the photograph-turned-icon of Che Guevara -- which graces the T-shirts of countless hipsters who barely know who the guy is -- Fairey's Obama poster is rooted in the graphic style of agitprop. There's an unequivocal sense of idol worship about the image, 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 silk-screen that you don't recognize but assume to be important in an abstruse way.
