Its been a couple weeks since I saw the Shepard Fairey show at the ICA Boston, and I’ve spoken with several people about it and come up with the following critique in a nutshell:
Its not clear who Shepard Fairey wants to be. Is he a graphic designer (a very good one in my opinion)? A transgressive street artist spouting “fuck the world”? or an artist (see the ICA show with everything in nice neat frames and “do not touch” stickers everywhere)? I’m going to go out on a limb and said that if I asked the Shepster himself, he would say “all three (duh?)” Now that’s cool, but the problem is when you posit yourself as different things to different people, it affects those other things that you’re trying to accomplish. For example: this exhibition, and its uber-clean curation, showed me that he really was a lot more interested in improving his “brand” and his reputation in the proper art world and the GD world and not so much interested in maintaining his “edge” (which, if you ask me was gone a while ago). Now he can still go out and make his stencils and his hollow psuedo-anarchist mantras, but any discerning viewer will inevitably see the inherent contradictions and hypocrisy oozing from within.
I couldn’t help think, while walking through the PACKED (on a thursday!) show that the ICA really scored on this one. They got this guy who represented liberal/progressives/Obamaphiles to suck the fawning masses to the Art Museum. Nice One ICA, bravo. As Jon Stewart said, most eloquently, “there’s a market for cocaine and hookers too”. Now I’m all for art for the people, but at the expense of conceptual integrity, that’s a little below the belt. The entire show felt like a set-up. Not even getting into the fact that the BPD arrested the guy on the way to the show. Yeah, what a way to boost the rebellious cred than getting arrested. Brilliant!! The images were great and all, production value of the highest quality, but even he will tell you, this aint art. It used to be art, but it aint no mo’. Not when you’re doing avatar stencils for Joey Rammone and saying things like “I’m not a musician, but I’m still gonna rock it hard as nails.” I mean, that was actually written on one of the gallery walls. Some one had to fish through Shepard Fairey quotes and say, yeah, that’s what we want to use. Puh-lease.
Shepard Fairey wants to be our Warhol. But there are some very big distinctions: Warhol loved consumerism (read The Philosophy of Andy Warhol) and his abuse of everyday graphic design and pop culture images was a response to its ubiquitousness and the joy he got out of everyday Americana. Shepard Fairey tries to play this game where he pretends to be Warhol and Rage against the machine all at the same time. He is at once using, benefiting from, and supporting consumer culture (see his hand bags and Nike posters) as he is trying to slash away at it with withering criticisms. Someone needs to explain to him that you cant have it all. Sometimes moderation is a trait to be desired.
I’ve got lots more thoughts on the matter, but I’ll save those for later (or if anyone wants to discuss this further).
cheers.