Obama "Hope" Posters | Know Your Meme Obama "Hope" Posters Part of a series on Barack Obama . [View Related Entries] Updated Aug 11, 2015 at 02:24AM EDT by Brad . Added Aug 27, 2009 at 03:10PM EDT by Jostin Asuncion . Like us on Facebook! PROTIP: Press 'i' to view the image gallery, 'v' to view the video gallery, or 'r' to view a random entry. Status Shepard Fairey Tags Wikipedia About The Obama “Hope” Poster is an iconic image of Barack Obama created by graphic designer and street artist Shepard Fairey [1] during the 2008 United States presidential election. Made with a stylized stencil of an Associated Press photograph of the then U.S. Senator Barack Obama , the posters were created independently of the official campaign. After the image was shared online, parodies of the poster depicting other notable figures and characters began appearing as well, mimicking the red, beige and blue color scheme of the original version.

Origin Shepard Fairey began creating street art as early as in 1989 with a viral campaign known as Andre the Giant Has a Posse , [2] which evolved into the OBEY [3] sticker campaign in the following year and has since appeared in numerous locations all over the world. [4] In October 2007, publicist Yosi Sergant suggested to Fairey that he make a piece of art in support of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Fairey then used a photograph (shown below, right) from April 2006, taken by Associated Press freelance photographer Mannie Garcia [5] as the basis for his stenciled poster. The first image he created (shown below, right) had the word “Progress” centered underneath the portrait, with a small OBEY symbol placed inside of Obama’s campaign logo. Spread In January 2008, Fairey put a series of 350 screenprinted Progress posters up for sale on his website [6] and its proceeds to be donated to the Obama campaign fund. They were priced at $45 a piece and sold out within fifteen minutes.

However, many of the first editions were resold on eBay for $3000-$10,000 each. [8] Following the initial run, he launched a second series of 3000 posters with the word “Hope” and an unedited version of the Obama logo at the campaign’s request. [9] Both versions, along with an additional poster encouraging people to vote, were put up on buildings in Los Angeles [10] before California’s primaries. [11] By April, parodies of the poster began appearing online, featuring a wide range of subjects including the Pope [12] , Hilary Clinton [13] and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. [14] A similar photo generator ObamiconMe [15] was launched in January 2009 by Paste Magazine, a year after the poster’s original release. After being shared on sites including Metafilter [16] , Buzzfeed [17] and Metafilter [18] , more than 70,000 images were uploaded to the site in its first two weeks.

Notable Examples Copyright Violation Claims On January 7th, 2009, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery announced [19] it had acquired Fairey’s hand-made version of the image with the word “hope” on it, intending to put it on display before Obama was sworn into office. Following this announcement, many bloggers began looking into the source of the original photograph the stencil was based on. Originally, the poster was thought to be modeled after a picture taken by Reuters photographer Jim Young. [20] However, Philadelphia Inquirer blogger Tom Gralish found the original photograph [21] , taken by Associated Press freelancer Mannie Garcia five months prior, on January 21st, 2009. After AP realized the photo was theirs, they began seeking credit and compensation for its use. [22] As a preemptive strike, Fairey filed a lawsuit on February 9th, 2009 [23] , asking for a federal judge to declare his work protected as fair use. He also published a response to AP’s actions on his blog.

[24] When the original photographer was asked for comment, Garcia said while he was proud of the art Fairey created, he does not “condone people taking things, just because they can, off the Internet.” [23] Destruction of Evidence On October 16th, 2009, the Associated Press released a statement [25] claiming Shepard Fairey destroyed and fabricated documents relating to the fair use case. Later that day, Fairey spoke with TechCrunch [26] , where he admitted that he submitted false images and deleted others as proof of the photo he actually used as a reference to create the Obama poster. After this admission, his suit with the Associated Press was privately settled in January 2011 [27] , but Fairey plead guilty [28] to a count of criminal contempt in February 2012. With his guilty plea, Fairey was facing up to six months in jail and scheduled to be sentenced on July 16th, 2012. [29] However, there was no news coverage on the sentencing results.

Shepard Fairey Appears on ‘The Simpsons,’ Could Head to Jail Over Obama ‘Hope’ Poster Shepard Fairey Appears on ‘The Simpsons,’ Could Head to Jail Over Obama ‘Hope’ Poster Dan Evon Shepard Fairey appeared on “The Simpsons” last night but it may be his last TV appearance in a while. The famous street artist, who created the Obama “Hope” poster, entered a guilty plea last week saying that he destroyed documents in order to hide the fact that he used a copyrighted Associated Press photo to create the iconic poster. Fairey appeared alongside several other famous street artists, including Robbie Conal, Kenny Scharf and Ron English, in an episode titled “Exit Through the Kwik-E Mart.” In the episode, Bart creates a street-art poster featuring Homer and the word “Dope.” Fairey is impressed with Bart’s work and invites him open his own gallery. But it turns out that Fairey is an undercover police agent and ends up arresting “El Barto.” The episode comes a week after Shepard Fairey plead guilty to one count of criminal contempt for destroying documents.

College News reports that Fairey sued the Associated Press in 2009 after the news organization claimed that Fairey had stolen their picture. Fairey claimed that he had used a picture that was protected by fair-use laws. Fairey later admitted that he was mistaken about the photo he used and actually did use an Associated Press photo. A criminal investigation was launched and last week Fairey plead guilty to destroying evidence about the original photo. Fairey said: “I was ashamed that I had done these things, and I knew I should have corrected my actions.” Fairey will be sentenced on July 16th. He could face up to $5,000 in fines and six months in prison. The president of the AP, Tom Curley, released a statement, saying: “The A.P. hopes that some good may come of this, by alerting judges and parties to the possibility that fake evidence may exist.” Do you think Shepard Fairey should go to jail for using the AP’s photo in his “Hope” poster?

Hope - the image that is already an American classic | Art and design | The Guardian Hope - the image that is already an American classic Sunday 9 November 2008 19.01 EST First published on Sunday 9 November 2008 19.01 EST Share on Messenger Close The iconic image of the US presidential election is a screenprint measuring 85x55cm on woven paper showing Barack Obama above the word "HOPE". Created by street artist Shepard Fairey, it has cropped up across America and, though not officially commissioned by the Obama campaign, on November 5 it hung around Chicago accompanied by the message "Congratulations Chicago's Own Barack Obama , President-Elect of the United States of America." Last week an original screenprint of Hope, and another image from the campaign - a picture of Obama accompanied by the word "Progress", were auctioned by Bonhams & Butterfields on the west coast of America for $2,700 and $4,800 respectively. The image's strength lies in its simplicity.

Over the past few months it has acquired the kind of instant recognition of Jim Fitzpatrick's Che Guevara poster, and is surely set to grace T-shirts, coffee mugs and the walls of student bedrooms in the years to come. Fairey, who often goes only by his last name, is regarded as one of the most influential street artists. Born in South Carolina in 1970, he first gained prominence through his Andre the Giant Has a Posse sticker campaign in 1989 while still studying illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. Fairey called it an exercise in phenomenology, and the tribute to the pro-wrestler soon morphed into Obey Giant - Andre's face and the word Obey, an image that has now appeared all over the world. Fairey's company produces not only political artwork but also album covers, film posters and a clothing line. Not surprisingly, the "Hope" image has been repeatedly parodied: images of Amy Winehouse alongside the word "Dope", or Sarah Palin above the word "Nope". It even made its way to a sign outside a California hairdresser showing an Afro-ed Obama and the slogan "Time For Change - $20 cuts".

"I didn't predict that it would take off so strongly," Fairey told CBS News, "[But] if you want to change what's going on around you, you have to be willing to participate." Shepard Fairey - Life and Biography HOPE Fallout and Current Works Controversy, Copyrights and Graffiti Shepard Fairey is a polarizing figure in the world of street art. His major works have made as much of an impact as the works of Space Invader and Banksy, although Fairey does not hide his face or change his voice when appearing on camera. His art is distinctly political, and Fairey frequently supports social causes and opposes corporate influence. He also profits off his most popular anti-corporate pieces, which angers some of his contemporaries. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Fairey had a reasonably comfortable childhood. He attended the Idyllwild Arts Academy and the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1992. A longtime skateboarder, Shepard easily became absorbed in the world of street art, and while he was still attending school, he began experimenting with using stickers on stop signs and walls.

OBEY: Street Art Goes Viral In 1989, Fairey made his first major viral work, although at the time concepts like “viral” didn’t exist in relation to art. Fairey created an image simple and confusing enough to spread rapidly across the United States through word-of-mouth and an untold number of sticker sheets. “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” was a portrait of wrestler and actor Andre the Giant with a scrawled message next to the Giant’s head. Fairey had no political purpose in mind when designing the image, simply hoping to inspire his viewers to think about their surroundings. He soon removed all of the color from the image and wrote “OBEY” in a stylized font beneath it, borrowing the slogan from John Carpenter’s anti-authority horror movie, “They Live!” OBEY caught on, and within a few years, Fairey’s stickers were on stop signs, walls and college campuses across the United States. The more the OBEY message spread, the more importance people attributed to the perceived message of resistance and purposeful opposition to corporations, politicians and authority figures. “It gains real power from perceived power,” Fairey said later.

The lack of a coherent meaning was a fundamental part of Fairey’s early work. “Question everything,” Fairey said when asked about the messages behind his images. As vague as this may seem to the uninitiated, the message resonated with the urban art community; OBEY became arguably the most ubiquitous, infamous street image of the 1990s. The Obama HOPE Poster In 2008, it seemed as though Fairey would never have a press interview that described him as anything but the creator of the OBEY sticker. Fairey probably wouldn’t have minded that fate–many artists struggle in obscurity their entire lives without creating a single well-known piece, and OBEY’s popularity had exceeded his wildest dreams. However, he was about to introduce his most successful and controversial work to date. Fairey created a number of posters for Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, using stylized portraits of the Senator with words like “Progress,” “Vote,” “Change” and “Vote” displayed across the bottom in large letters. The posters spread and were parodied by conservatives and embraced by Obama’s supporters.

Talking heads on TV debated the significance of the portrait and Obama himself sent Fairey a note of thanks. The 2008 election was one of the most viciously contested in recent history, and Fairey’s image undoubtedly had some effect on the result. Some cities, including Obama’s home city of Chicago, put up hundreds of copies. The Smithsonian even obtained a copy of the portrait for their permanent collection. Almost overnight, Fairey was one of the biggest names in contemporary art. Politics As Usual In light of the HOPE poster’s success, Fairey stepped up his production, creating inflammatory, politically charged posters that criticized the status quo and corporate culture. He was building his own Posse of dedicated fans faster than ever before, and Shepard was conscious of his new status as a counterculture celebrity. He supported the Occupy Movement in 2011, changing his Obama portrait to challenge the President directly. During this time, Fairey revisited his previous works with a less subtle reference to John Carpenter’s They Live!: Fairey also created posters to support causes, most notably the charity efforts in Haiti through Artists for Peace and Justice.

In 2011, Fairey’s art graced the cover of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year issue. His stylized portrait of an Occupy protester helped the movement continue to build strength in the face of waning public support. Financially, Shepard was doing well. He displayed his art in numerous exhibitions starting with the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art and quickly proceeding to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and numerous other venues around the world. He appeared as a character on The Simpsons and spun records at clubs under the moniker DJ Diabetic. Fairey was rapidly becoming America’s most famous and influential artist until a lawsuit threw his career into serious jeopardy. Legal Troubles and Conviction Although the HOPE poster reached even more people than OBEY and catapulted Fairey to international fame, the artist immediately faced legal issues for using a copyrighted picture of Obama without a license. Mannie Garcia, an Associated Press photographer, took the original picture. As the AP brought a civil suit, Shepard had a great fair use case. His legal team helped him promote the idea that “copyright law was not created to stifle creativity,” an opinion that he discussed in numerous interviews as the case began.

Fairey seemed on his way to mounting a successful defense. However, Fairey intentionally mislead the Court by destroying evidence on his own computer. When the Court found out, Fairey’s lawyers refused to represent him, and Shepard faced criminal charges. On his website, Shepard took full responsibility for tampering with evidence and accepted a sentence of 300 hours of community service, two years of probation and a sizable fine of $25,000. “My wrong-headed actions, born out of a moment of fear and embarrassment, have not only been financially and psychologically costly to myself and my family, but also helped to obscure what I was fighting for in the first place,” Fairey wrote, “the ability of artists everywhere to be inspired and freely create art without reprisal.” Even so, Fairey’s actions have not always matched his stated mission of protecting artists’ ability to correct. In 2008, he sued artist Baxter Orr for creating and selling a piece based on Fairey’s Andre the Giant portrait.

The image featured Andre with a protective respiratory mask over his face, parodying the original by replacing the “OBEY” message with “PROTECT.” However, Fairey has argued that Orr is well-known as an intellectual property thief and that the lawsuit will compel Orr to stop using other artists’ works. HOPE Fallout and Current Works Amidst the HOPE poster controversy and numerous commissioned gigs, some of Fairey’s contemporaries and former fans have accused the artist of selling out. Fairey addressed these accusations on his website by explaining that street artists need money to create their work. “I look at myself as someone who wants to empower artists (including myself) and so I refuse to subscribe to a dysfunctional standard toward street artists that does nothing but hold us back,” he wrote. “I’ve been called a sellout for using platforms for my art other than just the street, but I think there are many valid ways to share one’s art with the public and many valid ways to solve the difficult problem of surviving financially as an artist.” Fairey is an extremely controversial figure and an undeniably strong voice in the world of urban art.

He has created some of the most famous street images in history, and although his legal troubles disappointed some fans, it is difficult to say that Fairey’s influence is diminished. Although he is one of a handful of street artists who have made a safe transition to the gallery, he is still an active figure on the streets of cities around the world, whether through new works or the iconic OBEY, which continues to spread. Fairey was one of the first viral street artists, a powerful dissenter and, eventually one of the most outwardly political artists of our time. Share this!

Obama's On-the-Wall Endorsement - washingtonpost.com washingtonpost.com > Print Edition > Style Obama's On-the-Wall Endorsement Shepard Fairey put his street-art sensibility to work for his candidate of choice, in hopes of "appealing to a younger, apathetic audience." (By Jonathan Alcorn For The Washington Post) TOOLBOX Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 18, 2008; Page M01 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. All political art is propaganda (that is the point), but most political posters are bland, forgettable, wallpaper, like Fred Thompson on an off day. Fairey wanted something more iconic -- aspirational, inspirational -- and cool. In other words, he wanted to make posters that the cool cats would want. The 2008 Democratic primary season equivalent of the Che poster (with all that implies). More Mao, more right now. The kind of poster that might make its way onto dorm room walls of fanboys.

The kind of poster that might sell on eBay , as a signed Fairey Obama recently did, for $5,900. He wanted his posters to go viral. "I wanted strong. I wanted wise, but not intimidating," Fairey says of the look for his Obamas. The agitprop pop art has become a must-have accessory among a certain subset of the candidate's supporters, who have gobbled up more than 80,000 of Fairey's posters and 150,000 postcard-size stickers since Super Tuesday. Who is this Shepard Fairey? He is a skate punk -- with a secretary. A CEO in Puma sneakers. The rebel who did Pepsi ads. If you live in a big city, including Washington, you have probably seen his handiwork. Since 1989, during his student days at the Rhode Island School of Design, Fairey has been slapping stickers and pasting posters depicting the face of the Andre the Giant, the deceased French actor and professional wrestler, on every available surface, legal and not.

Fairey has spent two decades shimmying up lampposts and over chain-link fences in a tenacious public art enterprise, irony performed on a landscape scale. Thousands of his Andre stickers include the word "OBEY" in bold lettering. What are we dealing with here? Obey what? Obey whom? A giant from France? Aha. You have cracked the code. It is reverse psychology. ( Pssst! Don't obey.) You see, in his 1990 manifesto, Fairey wrote that "the Giant sticker campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. Heidegger describes Phenomenology as 'the process of letting things manifest themselves.' Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they become muted by abstract observation." We're talking German philosopher and author of "Being and Time" Martin Heidegger? The very same. "The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker," wrote Fairey.

Unless that person is what Fairey describes as "the paranoid or conservative viewer," who becomes confused and annoyed, "considering them eyesores and acts of petty vandalism, which is ironic considering the number of commercial graphic images everyone in American society is assaulted with daily." His pro bono Obey Giant campaign created a niche market for Fairey's graphic designs -- for movie ads ("Walk the Line"), album covers ( Led Zeppelin 's "Mothership" compilation) and the brown spirits (Dewars Scotch). At his new, plywood-floored offices at Studio One last week, in the shabby chic corner of L.A.'s Echo Park neighborhood, Fairey appears in jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. He's 38, boyishly handsome. He confesses he suffers from a Peter Pan complex.

He has just flown in from New York, where he DJ'd at the Guggenheim Museum , which is a kind of art school/street cred double axel that is almost impossible to pull off without appearing like a character from "Zoolander." While in Gotham, he erected two large Obama posters, one at the downtown intersection of Houston and Bowery, which is a super hive of Obama support rivaled only by, say, the Trader Joe's parking lot in Silver Lake in Los Angeles or the Busboys and Poets cafe/bookstore/performance space in Washington. 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." Messages. Images. Effect. Someone understands phenomenology. And the thing about stop signs? "He's kind of endorsing graffiti," Fairey says, "isn't he?" Who knows how many do-it-yourself reproductions of Fairey's Obama have been scanned off the Internet. "I have no idea. I think a lot," says the artist, who put the image on the Web in a downloadable file. "I've seen it on stencils, fliers, shirts, Web sites, places we had nothing to do with." Copyright infringement? No, no, no. "This is exactly what I wanted to happen." This isn't a limited-edition print. It's unlimited. He charged $25 to $45 for the first runs of 950 posters, to pay for the printing of the all the rest, which were free. Fairey says he hasn't made a dime off Obama nor does he think he has unfairly glommed onto the candidate. He has more Obama art in the works. Coming up next? Ten thousand bicycle spoke cards.

Shepard Fairey, Ishiuchi Miyako, Eric Wesley, Andy Coolquitt - The New York Times The New York Times Art & Design |Shepard Fairey: ‘May Day’ Search Art & Design | Art in Review Shepard Fairey: ‘May Day’ Continue reading the main story Photo “May Day” at Deitch Projects features art by Shepard Fairey, the creator of the Obama “Hope” poster. Credit Adam Reich Deitch Projects SoHo Through May 29 Forget the issues buzzing around Shepard Fairey, the well-known graphic designer, illustrator and street artist who created the Obama “Hope” poster. There have been copyright suits and countersuits, accusations of plagiarism and criticism about the corporate ad campaigns created by his company, Student Number One. Forget also the possible inconsistency of someone whose recent efforts earnestly emphasize free speech but who came to prominence with Big Brotherish, if tongue-in-cheek, street art: slightly sinister stencils and stickers featuring the wrestler Andre the Giant, scowling through a five-pointed star, and a single word, Obey. And forget most of all how good Mr.

Fairey’s designs can look as posters, album covers and murals or on T-shirts and skateboards. The further he is from traditional art objects and settings, the better. On the walls of an art gallery, his efforts look like death warmed over. His show at Deitch Projects centers on large poster-collages based on famous photographs of cultural heroes. They are embedded in intricately layered fields of sophomorically pertinent newspaper clippings and lives-of-the-saints attributes. A red, black and white Russian Constructivist palette predominates, but the colors are dark with age and nostalgia. And the bumpy surfaces, which resemble old shellacked linoleum, make everything feel embalmed. We see Woody Guthrie with his guitar, on which he painted the phrase “This Machine Kills Fascists”; Keith Haring with one of his radiant babies; and Muhammad Ali with references to the Vietnam War, Angela Davis and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The collage behind John Lennon and Yoko Ono includes the phrase “War Is Over.” Jasper Johns appears with a target stenciled onto his shirt and a newspaper advertisement announcing “Everything Must Be Sold!” near his head: that’s two blatantly bad ideas right there.

The backgrounds also include stenciled patterns, lettering and graphic styles redolent of everything from Art Nouveau to Pop; Andre’s cross face and “Obey” are almost invariably insinuated somewhere. There are clever details. In the Johns work, the “E” in obey is one of Mr. Johns’s stenciled number 3’s backward. And occasionally message and symbol mesh efficiently, as with works featuring American flags à la Johns that are tilted, like a vessel in distress (May Day). In addition, the physical ghoulishness subsides in some of the smaller, framed works on paper, especially silk screens in which opulent tilelike patterns make Andre’s face seem like a gargoyle, and collages that combine stenciled motifs with what the checklist calls “retired stencil (actual).” Otherwise, the ham-handed image-mongering, rudimentary associations and nasty yellow build-up are themselves distressing. Despite Mr. Fairey’s apparent good intentions about social action and individual creativity, this exhibition reveals the point at which lack of originality curdles into visual cynicism. It is not a pretty sight.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story After this show, Deitch Projects will close and Jeffrey Deitch , its owner and guiding light, will become director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. I wish he had found a more assuring way to say goodbye. ROBERTA SMITH A version of this review appears in print on May 21, 2010, on Page C25 of the New York edition with the headline: Shepard Fairey: ‘May Day’. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Katherine White: an analysis of the obama ‘hope’ poster in relation to visual and cultural theory Monday, 22 November 2010 an analysis of the obama ‘hope’ poster in relation to visual and cultural theory The Obama ‘Hope’ poster was created in April 2008 by Los Angeles based artist Shepard Fairey. In one day the image was printed, taken to the streets and sold out of the original 350 copies.

It was an overnight success and is widely regarded as an iconic poster, an assertion which can be supported by the fact that it is now available to purchase from numerous websites such as The poster is a particularly interesting one in that it can be set into an historical context of political art but was not initially commissioned as such. Fairey is a street artist who originally found recognition through his guerilla art campaign ‘Obey’ in which he fly-posted the urban environment with stickers instructing the viewer to obey, illustrated with the image of pro-wrestler Andre the Giant. On his website, Fairey explains that his work was inspired by the concept of phenomenology, a philosophical doctrine that states all knowledge comes from sense perception. He continues to expound that... ..(t)he OBEY sticker attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the product or motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with the sticker provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer’s perception... It can be assumed that the Obey campaign left its audience to question ‘Obey who?

What am I to obey?’ In a sense the Hope campaign is much more easily understood in that it has an obvious message even if it is not written out in so many words. Nevertheless, the purpose of the Obama poster is to provoke thought in the American electorate, and in doing so encourage the concept of hope to be almost subconsciously associated with the image of Obama. For this reason it could be argued that ‘Hope’ is a propaganda poster. In Ambrose and Harris’ Visual Dictionary of Graphic Design (2006, p.199) they explain that The graphic arts have been used throughout history for propaganda purposes due to the undeniable power of imagery and symbols. Propaganda typically advances an ideal or threat that the provider hopes the public will buy into. The poster is indisputably a powerful one. Obama is depicted in a stylized stencil format of four colours; navy, pastel blue, cream and bright red, the colours of the American flag. He looks away from the viewer into the distance. It seems that Obama is looking towards the future, his gaze serious yet confident, with the message HOPE emblazoned across the bottom of the poster.

The image itself works in frames of colour, from within the border of cream the light seems to fall to the right of Obama’s face. He looks away from this light, perhaps towards darker times ahead, yet the viewer is left with no doubt that he has hope for these darker times. The simplification of the shadows and light into flat fields of colour seems to signify that his message is a straightforward one: he is serious and he is contemplating his challenge with an optimistic outlook. The dark blue is used to define his features; a heavy brow denotes the magnitude of his task, his focused eyes and an ambiguously set mouth seem resolute yet neither negative nor defeated. Despite only being four letters, the text of the poster is important in a semantic sense. Traditionally election campaign slogans are anodyne and simplistic, e.g.... ‘A vote for Bloggs is a vote for the future’, and, to an affluent white protestant American the Obama ‘hope’ message may have seemed no different. However, viewed through the eyes of a relatively underprivileged black under class it would say something quite different: here is a man who looks like you - vote for him and you can at last hope that you may be able to become as successful as him.

In this way it becomes a very strong contextual message when related to the portrait of Obama looking handsome and reliable, almost like a film star. For example, most people would agree that George W. Bush looks like an idiot whatever he does, so placing him next to the word ‘Hope’ would probably be misinterpreted as a joke. Although it is perhaps unfair to judge people on their appearances, and unwise to trust these judgements, in doing so we highlight the significant relationship between the fittingly impressive appearance of Obama and the word Hope as a contributing factor to the success of the poster. The typeface used on the poster supports this powerful message of hope. Gotham, a strong slab sans serif, was originally designed by Hoefler and Frere-Jones for GQ magazine but, as a result of Fairey’s poster, is now more often associated with the Obama administration and indeed is used repeatedly by them. Of the font Hoefler and Frere-Jones ( commented: ‘From... humble beginnings comes Gotham, a hardworking typeface for the ages...

Gotham inherited an honest tone that’s assertive but never imposing, friendly but never folksy, confident yet never aloof.” These factors make Gotham the perfect typeface for the Obama presidency campaign; it could have been designed for it. The use of Gotham in this work creates authority; a bold and assertive statement, no question mark, no hesitation or doubt. Obama has hope, he is confident of change and progress and he wants you to feel the same, to share his vision of a better future for America. The only odd thing about the choice of Gotham as a typeface is the name itself - Gotham is a word traditionally associated with despair and ruin, especially in America where Gotham city is the bleak setting for the crime ridden world of Batman and also a derogative nickname for New York City. It would be interesting to know whether Hoefler and Frere-Jones knew of this connotation when naming their typeface. To put the poster into an historical context is to draw on the obvious relation it has to the iconic Che Guevara poster.

The Guevara poster was created in 1968 by Jim Fitzpatrick, and was, as with Fairey’s poster, based on a photograph, in this instance taken by Alberto Korda in 1960. The parallels are numerous - the political agenda, the stencil style of a limited palette and the resolute expression on both men’s faces as they stare into the distance. Perhaps the only comparison that cannot be drawn is between the parties’ political agenda: although Obama’s policies could be described as left of middle they are still far from the revolutionary Communism of the Cuban government. One could imagine that the Republicans may have sought solace in these Communist connotations, believing a candidate with such an outrageous political agenda to be unelectable. As with the Guevara poster before it, the Obama poster has been subverted many times by his opponents to change its meaning, as in the case where the word Hope was replaced with Hype ( In a similar way the poster has been adapted to parody Obama’sopponents, notably Sarah Palin and John McCain, whose faces have been given the Fairey treatment and teamed with the word ‘Nope’ in place of ‘Hope’.

Fairey’s ‘Hope’ poster is an interesting example of authorship in that it came in to question when it was discovered that the poster was based on a photograph by the Associated Press’ Mannie Garcia, who requested compensation for the unauthorised use of his work. In response Fairey sued for declaratory judgement because he believed that his poster was fair use of the original image. In an article by Jenna Wortham ( Fairey comments that ‘ I have not kept one dime from the Obama (posters) ... I have given the max amount to the campaign.’ His motive was not financial gain but to spread a message he believed in. In response, in an article by Randy Kennedy in The New York Times (2009), Garcia has said that he is ‘so proud of the photograph and that Fairey did what he did artistically with it, and the effect it’s had,” but that he did not “condone people taking things, just because they can, off the Internet.” So in fact it seems that Garcia’s issue was a point of principle rather than a dissatisfaction at the way the original photograph was appropriated.

In this way the Obama poster is a perfect example of the move away from the traditional concept, as understood at the dawn of capitalism, of author as divine creator and towards the more current practise of dialogical authorship in which an artist, for example Korda or Garcia, put their work into circulation for it to join, whether they approve or not, a bigger scheme, a world of Google Images (where Fairey found Garcia’s photograph) and a world in which art is perpetually subverted as part of a bigger and constantly changing dialogue. In spite of this it should be noted that Fairey does now reference Garcia’s original photograph in his ‘Hope’ posters. Fairey may seem an odd choice of artist for the Obama campaign to use as a representative for its cause: Fairey, often described as the U.S. equivalent of Bansky, is no stranger to the law for his repeated offences of illegal fly-posting. In fact his work exemplifies the forward thinking attitude of the new age of Democratic power under Obama’s administration: it is anti-traditionalist, anti-conservative and, most relevantly, anti-Republican.

The poster ‘Hope’ is polemic art: there is no rationalisation as to why the word hope should be associated with Obama, rather it works by provoking a visceral association - it incites an instinctive response rather than an intellectual one, in a similar way to the phenomenological ‘Obey’ campaign, and as such has succeeded in achieving its aim. Posted by

Question: Whose face appeared with the word “Hope” on a poster created by Shepard Fairey?
Answer: Barack OBAMA