Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970, Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.) is an American muralist and graphic artist who first gained attention for creating a sticker with a portrait of the towering professional wrestler André the Giant and the word Obey. Fairey is perhaps best known for his iconic 2008 “Hope” poster depicting then U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama. His work combined street-art activism with entrepreneurial spirit.

As a middle-class teenager, Fairey had an interest in skateboard culture. By 1984 he was designing and selling hand-decorated boards and T-shirts. He graduated (1988) from the Idyllwild Arts Academy in Palm Springs, California, and earned a B.F.A. (1992) from the Rhode Island School of Design. While at the latter institute, he experimented with street-art media, launching his first sticker campaign in 1989 with a crude portrait of André René Roussimoff, captioned Andre the Giant Has a Posse. He gained national attention and sold more than one million copies of another sticker with a refined version of the portrait and the single word Obey. A documentary short, André the Giant Has a Posse (1997; directed by Helen Stickler), and Fairey’s adroit use of the Internet further raised awareness of his instantly recognizable style—appropriated imagery reduced to strong graphic renderings in black, white, and red. Fairey’s subsequent design and marketing ventures—BLK/MRKT and Studio Number One—counted major corporations and rock bands as clients.

In 2008 Fairey found both mainstream success and counterculture notoriety with the red-and-blue “Hope” poster, which was created on his own initiative. It was quickly adopted by the Obama campaign and was widely imitated. However, Fairey had based the poster on a news photograph by Mannie Garcia without obtaining permission. When Garcia’s agency, the Associated Press (AP), demanded payment, Fairey responded by suing AP, “seeking a declaratory judgment that he had not engaged in copyright infringement.” The case was settled out of court in 2011, and in 2012 Fairey pleaded guilty to charges of criminal contempt for destroying documents and manufacturing evidence. It was not to be the artist’s last brush with the law. In 2015 the city of Detroit charged him with malicious destruction of property, alleging that he “tagged” posters at 18 unsanctioned sites. The case was later dismissed.

The “Hope” poster was just one example of Fairey’s frequent use of art to advance his strong beliefs. He protested the Iraq War, supported Occupy Wall Street, advocated gun control and environmental protection, and designed a T-shirt for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign. In 2012 he created for Ebony magazine a portrait of slain African American teenager Trayvon Martin. Protesting the perceived racism that emerged during the 2016 presidential campaign, Fairey created a series of three posters titled “We the People.” The series recalled the colours of the “Hope” poster but instead featured minority women as their subjects.

Fairey’s major mural commissions included the Peace Elephant (2011), adorning the West Hollywood Library, Los Angeles; and a multistory mural, Purple Project (2014), in Johannesburg, honouring South African statesman Nelson Mandela. Many of his later murals call attention to some of the major issues facing the United States in the late 2010s and early 2020s. These include mass incarceration (The Stamp of Incarceration [2015], various locations throughout Philadelphia), pathways to U.S. citizenship (American Dreamers [2018], on Mack Sennett Studios, Los Angeles), and voting restrictions (Voting Rights Are Human Rights [2020], Wallpapered City, Milwaukee, Wisconsin). The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, hosted Fairey’s first major solo exhibition, “Supply and Demand,” in 2009.