Frank Shepard Fairey Research Paper

Shepard Fairey full name Frank Shepard Fairey is a contemporary artist, graphic designer, and the founder of OBEY clothing. He is an American and was born in 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina. Shepard Fairey’s works consist and expands of screen-prints, stencils, stickers, installations, collages, posters, paintings, and murals. Fairey is widely known for the 2008 U.S presidential election with his Barack Obama HOPE poster.
Shepard Fairey’s practice disrupts the difference between fine and commercial art. Through the distribution of posters, stickers, and murals, related to his Obey Giant campaign, which yielded an international cultural phenomenon. Summarizes a number of frequent concerns in the artist’s work, including propaganda, portraiture, and political power. Fairey said “I want to encourage positive attributes of humanity; compassion, scrutiny of abuse of authority, peacefulness”.
Fairey doesn’t focus on a specific group as he uses his work for a wide range of people. This is done as he puts his work anywhere not only museums and galleries, but walls, signs and buildings. He believes not everyone cares about museums and galleries that it might be overwhelming for them and uses that to his advantage and goes out into the streets and public places. Fairey’s work site is not specific as he puts it anywhere he can, but his works still is put up in galleries. Fairey focuses on his work by making the audience question everything.
Fairey is heavily influenced by skateboarding, punk music and the style of the 1980s artists Winston Smith, Barbara Kruger, Raymond Pettibon, and Robbie Conal and other street artists. As his works progresses he perceives the message of resistance and purposeful opposition to corporations, politicians and authority figures. Fairey stepped up his production, creating inflammatory, politically charged posters that criticized the status quo and corporate