Obey

OBEY; SHEPARD FAIREY (Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A., 1970).
"Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité," 2021.
Offset lithograph on thick, mottled cream-colored paper.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 91 x 62 cm.

Frank Shepard Fairey, OBEY, is an American urban artist and graphic designer, famous for the iconic “Hope” poster used by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign. His designs draw on elements of mid-20th-century political propaganda posters. Including slogans such as “Think and create, print and destroy,” which blend the subversive with the entertaining, his themes and aesthetics often amount to a mix of caricature and a revival of political propaganda, Situationist ideas, and the aesthetic-philosophical revolutions of the 1960s—thematic undercurrents that were very common in art in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His status as an artist is controversial: on the one hand, he takes on graphic design and advertising projects for major brands, and on the other, facing arrests in various countries for urban vandalism due to his interventions, thus serving as a prominent figure in the debate over the role of the artist and his ideology at this moment in the history of capitalist societies. He champions public space as the primary arena for artistic and cultural life, offering a critique of the aesthetic and visual hegemony of advertising, led by major financial corporations.