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Had this book before when it first came out but returned it cause I need the money more, should have bought it online earlier and saved myself some money.
I had a book and a cover. While I enjoy the work of Mr. I returned it for a refund. The quality of the printing just did not justify the price. Fairey, the production quality of the book was incredibly poor. When I opened the package from Amazon, I found the book had completely separated from the binding.
We're trying to return it. The book arrived with a damaged cover. The top-left corner was pierced with something.
Very didactic, inspiring, reflexive and extremely well edited book.100% Recomended.All the best from Barcelona. Dear friends:This book shows a few things: how the medium is the message, how Shepard Fairey became one of the greatest american propaganda designers and how he represents an american art dream.
If Fairey has "developed a profitable livelihood exclusively based on pilfering the artworks of others", Vallen ultimately asks "can Shepard Fairey honestly be described as an artist who can critically assess the unholy union of government and big business, or offer comments on the underpinnings of the capitalist machine.". Vallen further supports that "Fairey simply filches artworks and hopes that no one notices" and that "these days any amateur with a minimally written crackpot manifesto can make waves in the world of art". He states that "Fairey is guilty of utilizing historic images simply because he "likes" them, and not because he has any grasp of their significance as objects of art or history".
Vallen expresses his outrage at how Fairey has made a career "out of the consistent, secretive and wholesale copying of other people's artworks" and describes why, in his opinion, "it should make obvious that anyone so ill-informed should not be in the vanguard of today's political art". Vallen also explains how Fairey is "deceiving people by pawning off counterfeit works as original creations" with numerous examples of original pieces shown side by side with Fairey's "lucrative OBEY fashion line" version. In response to Fairey's solo exhibition, Imperfect Union, (December, 2007) at the Merry Karnowski Gallery in Los Angeles, California, Mark Vallen, renowned artist, activist, illustrator and curator criticizes Fairey's work and career as an artist, in a essay published on his Art for a Change web site.
In the example of the White Panther logo, Vallen emphasizes that by "exploiting the panther logo for profit by printing it on boutique clothing, Fairey has accelerated the dehistoricization and commodification of American history", and in his opinion, "has forfeited his ability to speak as a dissident". Koloman Moser, Ralph "Bingo" Chaplin, Pirkle Jones, Rupert Garcia, Rene Mederos, Félix Beltrán and Gary Grimshaw are a few of the plagiarized artists that are mentioned in Vallen's critique.Please see these links:http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htmhttp://www.brghtnghts.com/blog/.p=150 He identifies Fairey's work as "machine art that any second-rate art student could produce" by picking apart Fairey's heavy usage of "silly portraits of a dead wrestling champion" as well as "absurdist propaganda".
Vallen acuses Fairey of "toying with the veneer of radical politics" when "his views are hollow and non-committal".
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