After reading multiple items about Shepard Fairey and his work, the Obama Hope poster, I have come to this conclusion. I believe that Shepard is nothing better than a plagiarizer, and what we see done with plagairism often has terrible consequences. People get expelled from schools, fired from jobs, lose lots of money, but he got away free. This article from the AP website tells us that the photographer dropped charges, most liely because he was just tired of it all. He deserves more credit than he got from taking the picture, and Fairey deserves a just punishment.
I think that Creative Commons is a reasonable idea for some things, but if they didn't want to put it there, then it doesn't belong there. If it had been put there, then Fairey still could have been in a lawsuit depending on the type of license put on it. He escaped with no real harm and that is what's wrong.
And no I am not putting up an Obamanated picture cause they are pretty generic nowadays.
Another topic in general is street art. I think there is a fine line between street art and graffiti and this needs to be determind. To me graffiti is simply writing ones name, a gang name, or something that really isn't something people would find attractive. Street art is more like something that people put time, effort, and skill into. Sometimes it is the best way to show the world your work, as many cannot get into an art galary, or another similar thing. Of course some people would just be plain offended by it either way so, I suppose it could be annoying. If someone was drawing on my building would be pretty annoyed.
Josh
Good post Josh, but I have to disagree with you in the street art and graffiti part. I believe that they are both very similar that its hard to tell the two apart. Some times when looking at graffiti some may look at it like you do, but others may look at it like art. Over the summer I saw some graffiti that I thought was amazing. Have you ever hear of Jean Michel Basquiat. He was a famous American painter that was most famous for his untrained expressionist figurative paintings with influences from his days as a grafiti artist. He was well known in the 1970's to 1988 which was the time of his death. Good post again.
ReplyDeleteFrom artists' points of views, check this article out, they agree with you: http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm
ReplyDelete