Shepard Fairey
Obey Hammer, 2019
Throughout his career, the street artist Shepard Fairey has shared his graphic style and political …
"As I develop the work for my 30th anniversary, I’m revisiting some classic images from …
Expanding on the legacies of artists such as Keith Haring and Andy Warhol, Shepard Fairey’s practice disrupts the distinction between fine and commercial art. A major artist of the street art movement, Fairey rose to prominence in the early 1990s through the dispersion of posters, stickers, and murals, related to his Obey Giant campaign, which yielded an international cultural phenomenon. Fairey’s iconic poster of President Barack Obama was adopted as the official emblem associated with the presidential campaign and encapsulates a number of recurring concerns in the artist’s work, including propaganda, portraiture, and political power.
Throughout his career, the street artist Shepard Fairey has shared his graphic style and political message with the public by designing posters. Fairey’s poster obsession began as a teenager. In high school, he would borrow his mother’s Xerox machine to copy logos from skateboarding magazines and plaster them across …
"As I develop the work for my 30th anniversary, I’m revisiting some classic images from throughout my career and exploring alternate compositions. I felt that this reconfiguration of my Hammer & Fist from 2000 worked well for a letterpress print."
Hammer and Fist Letterpress on cream cotton paper with …
Expanding on the legacies of artists such as Keith Haring and Andy Warhol, Shepard Fairey’s practice disrupts the distinction between fine and commercial art. A major artist of the street art movement, Fairey rose to prominence in the early 1990s through the dispersion of posters, stickers, and murals, related to his Obey Giant campaign, which yielded an international cultural phenomenon. Fairey’s iconic poster of President Barack Obama was adopted as the official emblem associated with the presidential campaign and encapsulates a number of recurring concerns in the artist’s work, including propaganda, portraiture, and political power.
