Shepard Fairey: #Obey at Palazzo delle Arti Naples (PAN)
December 6, 2014 to February 28, 2015
Via dei Mille, 60, 80121 Napoli, Italy

There is a vital distinction to be made between the kinds of works of art that are made to be shown in galleries and museums and what Joachim Pissarro and I have called “wild art” (in our 2013 book of that title from Phaidon Press), art that is initially presented outside this art world system. There is a great deal of wild art—for example, graffiti, tattoos and most of the art displayed in hotels and restaurants. But since in the contemporary art scene there is actually no significant difference in kind, besides location, between this wild art and art-world art, works of art can move between these two kinds of display sites. This distinction is important, however, because normally the art world—a system that relies upon exclusion to justify its aesthetic values—holds wild art at a distance. Occasionally, however, the distinction breaks down—and that is what has happened in this most instructive exhibition when Shepard Fairey’s graffiti was presented in a Neapolitan kunsthalle. The goal of what he calls his ongoing experiment in phenomenology, Fairey has explained, “is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment.” Thus his OBEY sticker attempts to stimulate curiosity and “bring people to question […] their relationship with their surroundings.” He wishes to cause them “to consider the details and meanings of (these) surroundings. In the name of fun and observation,” a self-description that makes him sound like a modernist landscape painter or many other art museum artists.

This large-scale exhibition provided the welcome opportunity to trace Fairey’s stylistic development. In 1997 and 1998 he did images of Stalin, Mao, Lenin, with the politically ambiguous “Obey” logo attached, ironical takes on images of familiar leftist heroes. Marylin Warhol (2000) made an explicit allusion to art-world art, a procedure which didn’t really come off, however, as this image superimposing a depiction of Warhol on a Warholesque picture of Marilyn Monroe is weaker than Warhol’s own depictions of Monroe or himself. Fairey was more successful in Malcolm X (2006) and his screen prints, Nixon Money, Mao Money, Lenin Money (2003)—punchier images with a clear political impact, as he was in his Uncle Scam (2007), Rise Above Cop (2007) and, most especially Two Sides of Capitalism: Good and Two Sides of Capitalism: Bad (2007) which complicate his earlier concerns by juxtaposing words and images. He became internationally famous for the advertising image of Barack Obama for the 2008 presidential race, an image of which was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. Thanks to his fame, he was invited to do beautifully decorative all-over red images of Angela Davis, Arab revolutionaries and St. Mark’s Horses for his show in Venice, 2009. The stunning mixed media collages Eye Alert Cream and Eye Alert Red (2010), close ups of faces with a dollar sign in the tear and a skull reflected in the eyeball, represent a new, richly suggestive development of his portraits.

Like any successful art world artist, Fairey has a developed personal style. His posters looked great in this site. Street artists normally seek one-off effects—you see their graffiti, and then stroll on. But when wild art moves into a gallery, it inevitably gets seen differently, in the context of an artist’s development and, also, in relation to that of contemporaries. Although a gifted designer of visually striking two-tone frontal images, Fairey’s development is relatively limited in formal terms, and yet the introduction by stages of more complex subjects makes for a visually rewarding retrospective. He has moved a long distance from his striking point. It was appropriate, surely, that I discovered the exhibition not through publicity in some art magazine or web site, but by seeing his ad in the streets. Open your eyes and you will discover that there’s a lot of wild art out there! Palazzo delle Arti is located in the upscale neighborhood of Chiaja, the one place in graffiti-filled Naples where little street art is found. “#Obey” reveals how art is transformed when wild art become art-world art. And so, now, as you can see from the upscale catalogue, his art is found in many private Italian collections.

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Shepard Fairey, the legendary street artist and graphic designer best known for his Hope posters for the 2008 Obama campaign, spent the first week of February 2012 in Dallas, Texas. Invited by Dallas Contemporary, the city’s non-collecting kunsthalle, Fairey and his crew took to the streets daily, painting murals and interacting with interested viewers. The five completed murals were celebrated at a dance party at which Fairey presided as DJ.

On Thursday evening, February 2, Dallas Contemporary invited curator Pedro Alonzo to interview the artist.  Peter Doroshenko, the director of the museum, estimates that 500 of the 560 people in attendance had never previously stepped foot inthe museum.  As Fairey walked into the main part of the raw warehouse space, after signing books for an hour, the room was completely quiet.

Alonzo asked him how he feels about working outside.  “I enjoy working outside; it engages members of the public that don’t necessarily go to galleries or museums … and, maybe makes people that do go to museums pay a little bit more attention to what’s going on in the street, so it’s this cross-pollination that’s happening.”

As I scanned the audience, I saw a lot of young people wearing Obey clothing (Fairey’s brand) and raptly awaiting the voice of their hero.  Fairey spoke of his own heros, the bands and musicians that resonated with him as a teenager:  “The Clash and a few other punk groups had a great sense of style and seemed like they were enjoying their lives.  It was cool to care, and that made me want to care even more … in order to be socially conscious and engaged, it shouldn’t be drudgery.”

Fairey’s punk roots still inform his ideology.  Often, his work has a specific call to action yet the work is never a simple endorsement.  In using a palette based on propaganda posters, he begs the viewer to question the message as well as the platform.  In Dallas, his murals have messages like “Peace” and “Rise Above.”  While Shepard was setting up to paint, I asked him about these seemingly straightforward, non-confrontational messages.

“Everything in life is a little bit of a balance between being soothing and inspiring and confrontational and agitational.  I’m taking an approach that is absolutely core to my practice and my values… but also, not going to make the lives of the people who work at the museum more difficult.”

Fairey is no loose cannon.  He is rebellious for a purpose, but also respectful for that same purpose: to get his art out there without compromising what he believes.

An audience member at the museum asked him: “What happens to a rebellion when the rebels win?”

He responded with a humorous bit about how power corrupts and how he is now a bastard.  And then with a serious tone, he said: “When Nirvana became popular, I was psyched because hair metal got pushed off the radio … I like it when rebels win.” In an interview with Peter Simek the next day in the Dallas daily blog, D, he elaborated on this theme: “When Nirvana came on the radio, I wasn’t an outsider-elitist who was like, ‘Oh, well, now more than five people know about Nirvana, I hate them, they sold out because they resonated.’ Resonating is not selling out. Selling out is compromising your values to pander to the lowest common denominator.”

Fairey isn’t the only recipient of the “sellout” epithet.  It seems to attack any artist with a wide level of merchandising: Keith Haring, for instance, with whom Fairey shares methodology. “Other artists had been accusing me of selling out since my paintings started selling,” Haring is on record as saying. “I mean, I don’t know what they intended me to do: Just stay in the subway the rest of my life?”

In setting up their respective Pop shops, Haring and Fairey both wanted affordable wares available to the people.  The market can be populist or else it will be elitist.  Fairey wants his designs accessible, to function on a viral level, through stickers, tee shirts and posters.  If art is about engagement, then it should be a sign of success that Doroshenko is receiving an unprecedented number of “thank you” emails and calls from the Dallas community for this exhibit. Commercial success in relation to an artist’s integrity is an important discussion, but the proof of integrity is in the work: the streets of Dallas have a far richer dialogue, thanks to Shepard Fairey.

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