Andre the Giant Has a Posse is a street art campaign based on a design by Shepard Fairey created in 1989 in Providence, Rhode Island. Distributed by the skater community, the Andre stickers began showing up in many cities across the U.S.A. At the time Fairey declared the campaign to be "an experiment in phenomenology." Over time the artwork has been reused in a number of ways and has become worldwide, following in the footsteps of World War II icon "Kilroy Was Here". At the same time, Fairey altered the work stylistically and semantically into the OBEY Giant .
History
Fairey and fellow RISD student Ryan Lesser, along with Blaize Blouin, Alfred Hawkins, and Mike Mongo, created paper and vinyl stickers and posters with an image of the wrestler André the Giant and the text "ANDRE THE GIANT HAS A POSSE 7' 4", 520lb", as an in-joke directed at hip hop and skater subculture, and then began clandestinely (and somewhat fanatically) propagating and posting them in Providence, Rhode Island and the rest of the Eastern United States.
By the early 1990s, tens of thousands of paper and then vinyl stickers were photocopied and hand-silkscreened and put in visible places throughout the world.
"Andre The Giant Has a Posse" is also the title of a 1995 documentary short by Helen Stickler, which was the first documentary to feature Shepard Fairey and chronicle his influential street art campaign. The film screened worldwide, most notably in the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. In 2003 Village Voice film critic Ed Halter described the film as "legendary ... a canonical study of a Gen-X media manipulation. One of the keenest examinations of '90s underground culture."
Threat of a lawsuit from Titan Sports, Inc. in 1994 spurred Fairey to stop using the trademarked name André the Giant, and to create a more iconic image of the wrestler's face, now most often with the equally iconic branding OBEY. The "OBEY" slogan was not only a parody of propaganda, but also a direct homage to the "OBEY" signs found in the 1988 cult classic film, They Live , starring Roddy Piper. About "Obey," San Diego Union-Tribune art critic Robert L. Pincus says Fairey's work, "was a reaction against earlier political art, since it delivered no clear message. Still, “Obey” was suggestively antiauthoritarian." "Following the example set by gallery art, some street art is more about the concept than the art," writes The Walrus (magazine) contributor Nick Mount. “'Fuck Bush' isn’t an aesthetic; it’s an ethic. Shepard Fairey’s Obey Giant stickers and Akay’s Akayism posters are clever children of Duchamp, ironic conceptual art."
Appropriation and fair use
See also: Fair use and appropriation artFairey has come under criticism for appropriating others' artwork into his own while failing to provide attribution for the work used. Austin, Texas graphic designer Baxter Orr did his own take on Fairey's work: a piece called Protect, with the iconic Obey Giant face covered by a SARS (respiratory) mask. He started selling prints, marked as his own work, through his website. On April 23, 2008 Orr received a signed cease-and-desist order from Fairey's attorneys, telling him to pull Protect from sale because they allege it violates Fairey's trademark. Fairey threatened to sue, calling the designer a "bottom feeder" and "parasite".
Over time, Fairey's artistic imagery has evolved into a sometimes subtle, sometimes not, parody of a range of iconic styles, mostly a juxtaposition of popular political propagandas and multi-national commercialism. It usually bears the text OBEY Giant. In addition to countless small stickers, OBEY Giant has been spread by stencil, murals, and large wheatpaste posters, covering public and private spaces from building faces and street sign backs, to commercial spaces such as billboards and bus stop posters. Furthermore, the popular "OBEY" slogan and stylized André The Giant face continues to be reproduced on products ranging from art and clothing to home accessories and decor, considerably expanding the impact of the campaign through iconology based on an allegiance to media and popular culture in the guise of counterculture. Fairey has acknowledged the irony of being a street artist exploring themes of free speech while at the same time being an artist hired by corporations for consumer campaigns. Of this he has stated that designers and artists need to make money. "I consider myself a populist artist," Fairey says. "I want to reach people through as many different platforms as possible. Street art is a bureaucracy-free way of reaching people, but T-shirts, stickers, commercial jobs, the Internet -- there are so many different ways that I use to put my work in front of people."
Parodies
The original "André the Giant has a posse" sticker format has been widely imitated for humorous intent. In these parody stickers, the image of André the Giant has been replaced with a similarly stylized black and white photo of some other person or character, along with the new figure's height and weight. For example, the parody sticker "Tattoo the Midget has a bigger posse" features the image of Hervé Villechaize portraying the character " Tattoo " from Fantasy Island . Colin Purrington's "Charles Darwin has a posse" stickers, featuring a black and white photo of Charles Darwin, promote the teaching of evolution. During the 2000 Presidential Campaign "Ralph Nader has a Posse" showed up on college campuses. Numerous other parody stickers can be found featuring different pop culture figures, including the Homestar Runner character Strong Mad. Peter Griffin in the TV show Family Guy is seen painting over the Sistine Chapel with the Obey Giant Icon in the season 4 episode "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire". On the DVD commentary for this episode, show creator Seth MacFarlane mentions that he was classmates with Fairey at the Rhode Island School of Design.
These parody stickers are a further extension of the original "joke," and thus are most likely to be found in locations where the original André the Giant iconography is already familiar, such as SoHo, Manhattan, or South Street, Philadelphia. An unusual occurrence of a parody sticker was at the particle physics laboratory Fermilab where the director of the lab was the subject of the sticker.
One popular Obey Giant sticker utilizes the face of notorious Kansas City serial killer Bob Berdella.
Another uses the image of The Dude from The Big Lebowski with "ABIDE" in place of "OBEY".
Tenacious D produced stickers with the slogan "Obey the D" and stylized images of their members, Jack Black, and Kyle Gass, over their initials.
Guitar Hero 2 features a "Vlad has a Posse" sticker on various loading screens throughout the game. Rock Band 2, made by the same people as Guitar Hero 2, has a stop sign with various stickers on it in a loading screen, one of which is a "Sasso the Giant has a posse" sticker in the same style as the original Andre sticker.
"Jackie Manuel has a posse" T-shirts are also available in the UNC-Chapel Hill area.
Electronic Frontier Foundation created a sticker with the words "Fair Use Has a Posse" on it.
"Joey Deacon Has A Posse" parody stencils have appeared in the UK.
Further reading
- E Pluribus Venom by Shepard Fairey (2008) Gingko Press.
- Philosophy of Obey (Obey Giant): The Formative Years (1989 - 2008) , edited by Sarah Jaye Williams (2008), Nerve Books UK.
- Obey: Supply & Demand, The Art of Shepard Fairey by Shepard Fairey (2006), Gingko Press.
- Bearman, Joshuah (October 1, 2008). "Street Cred: Why would Barack Obama invite a graffiti artist with a long rap sheet to launch a guerrilla marketing campaign on his behalf?,". Modern Painters (artinfo.com) . http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/28602/street-cred/ . Retrieved 2008-10-01 .
- Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey A critique by artist Mark Vallen.
See also
- André the Giant
- Che Guevara (photo)
- Culture jamming
- Graffiti
- Guerrilla art
- Kilroy was here
- Meme
- Pop art
- Schwa (art)
- Sticker art
References
- ^ http://www.impo
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