Obey

"OBEY"; SHEPARD FAIREY (Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A.,1970).
"Cornel West."
Silkscreen, issue 381/450.
Published by Obey Giant, Los Angeles.
Signed in pencil in lower right corner. Serifed in lower left corner.
Also signed by Cornel West and Glen E. Friedman.
Measurements: 61 x 47.5 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 take elements from mid-20th century political propaganda poster art. Including slogans such as "Think and create, print and destroy", which mix the subversive with entertainment, his subject matter and aesthetics often come to be a mix between caricature and revival of political propaganda, Situationist ideas and the aesthetic-philosophical revolutions of the 1960s, thematic backgrounds very common in the art of the late 1990s and the beginning of the present century. His situation as an artist is controversial, maintaining works of graphic design and advertising with major brands on the one hand, and facing arrests in several countries for urban vandalism with his interventions, thus being a marked representative of the discussion on the role of the artist and his ideology in the present moment of the history of capitalist societies. He claims the public space as the main space for artistic and cultural life, proposing a critique of the aesthetic and presential hegemony of advertising, led by large financial corporations.