Time To Address A Redress

Shepard Fairey. If you have a pulse, live in the United States and have access to the media in any of it's various forms, you've heard of this gentleman. Doubtless, you've heard his name amidst claims of plagiarism and theft. First it was the Associated Press accusing him of copyright infringement for borrowing from an image one of their photographers took of then-congressman Obama. Hoards of people jumped on the "OMG, like $ue him, dude! He hates your artistic soul!" bandwagon. Some were honestly against Fairey's appropriations (like Milton Glaser, who shared some less than kind words about Fairey.) Following that, other artists came in upset about Fairey's appropriations including Ed Nachtrieb.

It's time to address and end this silly debate. For most of those who are on the offensive toward Fairey, they fall into one of two camps. The first, and most common, camp includes the historically ignorant. These folks seem to be completely unaware of art history as they claim that Fairey should at least "cite" or "give credit" to those whose works he appropriates. Let's think about this in terms of other mediums for a minute:

Books - Authors commonly cite other authors, borrow from cultural events, and quote pop culture figures under the guise of an alias. Commonly, these cues are represented by a visual cue: the quotation mark. Yes, I'm quoting this! I want you to see it! Of course, the idea is that you will recognize the quote. If you don't, then they haven't necessarily given the author credit, they've just mentioned that it's not their own original phrasing.

Music - When was the last time you saw a rock artist cite Bach? You haven't you say? Well then clearly those theifs all need to be prosecuted. Get going, you have most of the last 100 years of music to go arrest.

And then there's that art history thing I mentioned before. DuChamp superimposed his face on the Mona Lisa and called it his. He never cited Da Vinci. Warhol painted the Campbell's can and a Brillo box. He never gave credit to those designers. Have you heard of Raphael's Modonna and Child? Pick one.

The second group of people are those who seem to think that Mr. Fairey is some ignorant fool who just wants to make money by stealing images. This group, whose complaint is far more realistic, is still missing a few parts of the truth. First, Mr. Fairey sells his prints at minimal cost on small runs and doesn't sell competitively on the market. Did anyone also notice that he gave away the Obama image? It wasn't sold to the campaign, it was a donation. His non-competitive approach makes it fairly clear he's not doing it for money. He would make loads more selling his prints at five times the cost, and would get just as many buyers.

And, last, to address Mr. Nachtrieb's complaint that Fairey misuses his image because "with no attachment to it's original context or how it fits into the Chinese story" it loses it's original meaning and significance. First, Mr. Nachtrieb's original photo also does not indicate that this was the first appearance of weapons on the Beijing streets. Second, those in the US who are educated will clearly recognize those soldiers as members of the red army during the revolution. The rest of the folks who wouldn't know that wouldn't know it in Nachtrieb's image either. Both images do give a minimum story of Maoist soldiers on the move. What's important, and where Mr. Nachtrieb seems to miss the point, is that Mr. Fairey's image is only important because of the context of Mr Nachtrieb's photo. The accusation is that it loses it's context, when in reality Fairey's image only makes sense because of the original context juxtaposed with contradictory elements.

I'm well beyond my word count, but I hope this clears up a very small part of this complex issue.