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250316 ONEW The 4th EP Connection Xiongbao 2nd Fansign in Beijing

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"Plakaddiction"

“Plakaddiction”

While checking some of our old stuffs from the stock room, I stumbled upon these gems…

Some of my Dad’s collection of vinyl records. Wow!

I then remembered that we used to have a turntable (blue color) and we have lots of vinyl records (45’s, 78’s and 33’s ). When I was a kid I used to listened to these vinyls and my favorite were the songs of Nora Aunor (By the way, my parents are solid…

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The Shepherd Fairey Controversy

Pablo Picasso once said, “Good artists copy, Great artists steal” . While I don’t completely agree with taking this  quote literally in a  moral sense, I thought of this as I was reading the articles about the Shepherd Fairey Obama controversy. Is Shepherd Fairey a crook for using a photo from the Associated Press without their permission or is it within his rights as a creative individual? There’s some controversy, understandably.

I remember the first time I saw Shepherd Fairey’s iconic Obama poster. You couldn’t look at it without feeling some vague sense that something big, something life changing was about to happen. Back in 2008, the hype for Obama and his message of ‘hope’ was at an all time high. This poster has become so iconic now it has been readapted in memes and other political parodies across the internet. The photo taken of him by the Associated Press was a generic photograph of Obama, looking wistfully into space. This photograph can be accessed on google and is open to the public. Shepherd Fairey used this photograph without official permission for the creation of the poster. Now, I do believe that Shepherd Fairey should have known better about the copyright laws and should have asked permission to use this photograph. He works in the art field after all. I have a friend who works at Kodak, and when discussing this with them they believed he was in the wrong because if Kodak ever used someones photo without their permission, they’d be setting themselves up for a lawsuit, it’s a no brainer.

However, I was still not convinced that Shepherd Fairey was a criminal. Take for instance, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup. This piece of art falls under the category of Appropriation Art. He is taking something that is in the public’s collective consciousness and manipulating it to make a point. Shepherd Fairey is taking a photograph of Obama, who is a figure widely known to most of America at the time of the poster and manipulating it to make the poster that has in turn become part of our collective zeitgeist. This is not stealing nor is it plagiarizing because Shepherd Fairey was not passing off the image as his own. He was using it as a reference guide to create his art. He took Obama’s face and posterized it with amber and blue colors, clearly changing it from it’s original state. I believe Shepherd Fairey’s poster is Appropriate Art. He is making art with social commentary, much like Andy Warhol was referencing American consumerism with his Campbell’s soup can. Where would the art world be today without the right of the artist to use and manipulate the content of other’s for the sake of making art? You can argue that nothing is completely original. I believe what Shepherd Fairey had done is completely acceptable. 

Shepherd Fairey released a statement saying he used the photograph to create a poster to help Obama win the election and did not profit from the poster. While I cannot speak on the validity of him receiving profit or not, if it is true it further proves that he is innocent. I assume Shepherd Fairey found this image on google. Should he have credited the source? Yes. Should he be sued for $25,000 for not doing so? I do not believe so. Mannie Garcia of Associated Press had taken this photograph of Obama, and because it was so generic, he did not even recognize that his photograph was being used in the Obama poster. The photograph to me did not seem unique enough to be labeled as art. I do not think Shepherd Fairey plagiarized anything because the photograph was not making any sort of statement artistically, it was only a generic photograph of the President speaking at press time. Shepherd Fairey admitted that he could not find the owner of the photograph when he released the poster but did acknowledge the photograph was not his. While I do think it’s lazy for him to not research it further, I also do not think he realized the extent to which the poster would become famous, and looking back I am sure he wishes he had credited Mannie Garcia from the beginning. You cannot use someone’s photograph without their permission if you are making money of it. Again, this is why a corporation like Kodak would not be allowed to use someone elses photograph for an advertisement, etc. However, Shepherd Fairey is a street artist, the brainchild behind “Obey” and other punk movements. When he expressed he was not making a profit from the poster, I can’t help but believe him. He is a political artist who has made commentary like the Obama poster before. In 1989, he created the Andre the Giant has a Posse sticker which he plastered around Rhode Island, he was later threatened by Titan Sports, Inc. for the use of the name “André the Giant”, to cease and desist. 

At Nazareth College, students are sternly taught not to plagiarize another’s work. This idea can be more clearly enforced when it comes to essays and writing pieces, but the line becomes blurry when you look at art. I have used reference photos for paintings and drawings, and even used photographs without crediting them in my digital work, of course I had manipulated most of the photographs beyond recognition. I believe Shepherd Fairey would have saved himself a huge legal battle if he had credited Mannie from the start. I also strongly believe by not crediting him he was making a much more important statement, that the artist has the right to have the freedom of expression to use the media that is available to them.  In the Obama case, Shepherd Fairey used the “Fair Use” defense against Mannie Garcia. The copyright laws state that you cannot use another’s work without their permission, if you do so that is copyright infringement. The Fair Use law states if the work was not damaging to the reputation of the potential market for the original work, you can use it. In this case, Fairey’s poster was extremely powerful for helping the Obama campaign and Obama’s exposure to many people across America. I believe in this sense Mannie should have thanked Fairey for taking his work and making it into something greater. Fairey was not drawing a mustache on him, like Marcel Duchamp did with the Mona Lisa, he was transforming Obama into a respectable cultural icon, and that is something that cannot be bought.