freedom to suck
Shepard Fairey, "The AP, Obama, & Referencing"
Brian Sherwin, "Response to Shepard Fairey"
Without a clear empirical way to locate the line between legitimate and illegitimate appropriation, I say we have to err on the side of anarchy in order to protect freedom. Let Fairey make his terrible art and let the zombies keep snapping it up - I don't care if he gets rich. His disingenuousness and the vacuity of his artworks betray a deep spiritual illness - he is already punished. Let's not create laws that could be used to restrict our artistic freedom just to slap an annoying mosquito.
9 comments:
"... he is already punished."
That was down-right beautiful.
perfectly said. u made my day :)
You come off as a jealous hater on from this post. I had never heard of you before today when you were quoted on the Austinist.
I always love to check out new art but I am sick of the holier than thou attitude.
If his success really didn't bother you you wouldn't have mentioned it.
Good luck with your art but I highly doubt that you will ever be successful with this mid set.
I think I need this to be cleared up a little bit. Is your (or whoever wrote this) problem with Fairey his appropriation of imagery? You say "spiritual illness"... That is a pretty dramatic statement. Is it because yiu see him as a plagarist...that is the only reason I can see to get so heated. There are tons of artists out there whose work I heavily dislike, but I would never take it to that level. So you don't like the guy's art, why get so personal? Do you not believe that art is subjective? Also, is this a quote from
another source? Who originally wrote that, because I think there might be some confusion.
danfun: Thanks for the thoughful and well-intentioned crticism. I regret that the emotional tone of this post got in the way of the more important point I wanted to make about the copyright case: that even if Fairey has crossed the line from legitimate to illegitimate appropriation, _wherever you draw that line in your own judgment, without some empirical basis for delineating the boundary it would be unwise to pass any new law or precedent restricting appropriation in any way, because without a clear boundary the same law could easily be used to restrict forms of appropriation that are uncontroversially acceptable and an important part of many artists' practices.
In other words, even if you hate Fairey's work, even if you think he's crossed a line with some of his 'appropriations' of others' work, you should still hope he wins this case. Any law restricting artistic practice is too radical and too dangerous a medicine for a problem like Fairey stealing photos & t-shirt designs. While I agree it sucks to be a hard-working artist laboring in obscurity and to have your work stolen by a jackal like Fairey and see it pop up in Urban Outfitters, I'm saying you kind of have to take one for the team - let's not let one person taking advantage of the freedom we currently enjoy end up ruining it for all of us. I sometimes work with images created by other people, and I wouldn't care to risk my ability to do what I do just for the sake of punishing Fairey for ripping off someone else's design.
Thanks so much for expanding on that. I understand what you are saying now.
katy: Thanks for your interest. First, nothing in the original post is a quotation from anything else.
You ask whether my 'problem' is with Fairey's work his his use of others' work - I don't like his work. Aside from that, some of the examples I've seen (you can google it) of his use of others' designs seem to me clearly to cross a line into ethically dubious territory - I won't provide examples because I'm not interested in debating this point; if you don't think he's a plagiarist I won't argue. The use of the Obama photo doesn't really seem eggregious to me, although it's pretty obvious that you need to obtain the photograper's permission before you go printing millions of posters. What really upsets me is that his behavior might end up reducing everyone's artistic freedom.
The 'spritual illness' remark is my purely subjective reaction to the preceived intent of Fairey's work. It feels heartless, nihilistic, manipulative, violent, and cruel to me. Although his images are intentionally devoid of content, he aggressively brands them into our consciousness. They are like noise. My point in the original post is that the burden of his own conscience is sufficient punishment in my opinion. His work doesn't seem to be very open, nor does his attitude in discussing the appropriation issue, which indicates to me that he is probably already suffering from shame and an inability to express his feelings. This was actually a sympathetic comment, although it obviously doesn't read that way - Fairey doesn't need legal punishment, he needs healing. If he is stealing others' work, it's probably because he doesn't believe in his own ability. If he is being dishonest about his intentions, it's certainly causing him shame. He might be making money unscrupulously, but he's not laughing all the way to the bank. So this is really just another argument against establishing new legal precedents restricting artists' ability to appropriate images.
I'm sorry if it hurts Fairey's feelings for me to say that he is spiritually ill, but it is not intended to be unkind. We all have some form of spiritual illness, some obstacles to openness and kindness. I don't mean some giant Father in space is going to punish him for eternity or anything like that, only that he is suffering.
there are intelligent models of image appropriation: remember cindy sherman, or our old friends johns and rauschenberg and warhol? sherrie levine's piece after walker evans is a photograph of a photograph.
image appropriation is nothing new and is legitimate artistic fodder. that doesn't change the fact that fairey is a dilettante. i don't care if he got his bachelor's at RISD.
OBEY shirts are kind of like cbgb's or che guevara shirts. you're THAT guy when you wear one.
(sorry i don't know how to be civil)
Right on, Sam.
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