OBEY your thirst: Shepard Fairey at the CAC
Everything Old is New Again
Much of the debate surrounding Shepard Fairey these days seems to have little to do with the work itself and more about how the work is being made, or particularly, depending on your perspective, who made it first. I have no wish to enter into this debate, but suffice to say that if, as Andy Warhol claimed “Art is what you can get away with.” then Shepard Fairey is getting away with a lot, and both the CAC and the ICA in Boston are his accomplices
Aesthetically, Fairey’s first major retrospective entitled “Supply and Demand” has all of the impact of any one of the bombs, guns, or grenades he freely appropriates. That is to say that after the initial blast wears off, there is very little left to linger over. Rather than “Shock and Awe” we are left with a sort of “Shock and ummmmm”. Fairey’s images may be effective on the street, where the one liner, fast read is appropriate to a viewer on his or her way somewhere else (there are plenty of examples around the city) but in a gallery or museum setting, a place where one is encouraged to ponder the subtleties of the work, they lack depth, both formally and conceptually.
The seemingly endlessly permutations on the red, black, and white motif, while holding the show together stylistically, give one the sense that the whole of the exhibition is far greater than the sum of its parts. By over relying on the one-two punch of a newspaper based, collage ground, and a stenciled central figure, Fairey’s work actually gets less interesting the longer one is engaged with it. And because Fairey’s appropriations gut the meaning and intent of the original works on which they’re based, the viewer never receives a clear picture of the artists point of view; save for some tired sloganeering featured in many of the works. No matter how hard Fairey and the CAC try to convince us that the vacuous nature of his art is intentional, the effort rings hollow. Fairey’s ostensible critique of capitalist systems is in actuality a poorly disguised wholesale buy in. For someone who has the opportunity to communicate so much to so many, Fairey’s work actually says very little.
It’s not all bad news however. Fairey is at his best when he is parodying both himself and the consumer culture that has given rise to his work. By replacing the iconic image of Che Guevara or Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe with the visage of Andre the Giant, or riffing on the Campbell’s Soup can, the viewer is let in on both the joke and the meaning, and it is a richly rewarding experience. Sadly this experience is not repeated elsewhere.
In his series of portraits of musicians and rappers, Fairey’s prints just come off as generic. We are confronted with the same images of Notorious BIG, Tupac, LL Cool J, Jim Morrison, etc. that we have all seen ad nauseam. Whereas as Warhol’s celebrity portraits retain a sense of the artist’s personal tastes and style, Fairey’s portraits are just bland and flavorless.
This sort of flavorless gruel that Fairey serves up over and over again puts him at odds with other, more effective street artists. Whereas Banksy and Blek le Rat make work that engage both viewer and environment in ways that not only interrupt our expectations, but also provide incisive critical commentary on current events. Fairey, on the other hand, seems incapable of giving his viewer anything other than a warmed over rehash of a 1960′s and 70′s anti-war, civil rights, punk rock mentality; which would have been fine 40 years ago.
It is difficult to know what Shepard Fairey and the CAC want us to make of this exhibition. Are we supposed to take him and his work seriously as fine art, or should we understand that he is just a very successful commercial artist and this retrospective is yet another way to promote his brand?
This ambiguity is not helped by the manner in which most of his work is presented by the CAC. Much of the didactic panels and chat labels in the exhibition reinforce the notion that we should take this seriously. Some, such as the label next to the ubiquitous “Obama Hope” piece go so far as to suggest that Fairey actually “rendered” the image of Obama. There is no mention of the fact that legal action was taken against him last year for essentially copying the image lock, stock, and barrel from an Associated Press photographer. Because there is so much controversy surrounding the artist regarding his use of hyper-appropriation and issues of fair use, and because of the CAC’s utter lack of engagement with those issues in this exhibition, one might be forgiven for suspecting that they are being disingenuous at best, and deceptive at worst. Though as an institution charged with an educational mission, this is more a problem for the CAC, not Fairey.
Ultimately “Supply and Demand” is rife with all of the complications and contradictions one would expect from a capitalist par excellence. While not completely dissatisfying, the moments of true conceptual interest are few and far between and they only serve to suggest that Shepard Fairey is capable of putting more thought into his work than he seems willing to. But then again, why bother? Good artists borrow, and great artists steal, right?
C
