!Plagiarist
When I first saw Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” poster, I liked it. That is until I found out the ugly truth behind most of his work (including the Obama promotional poster). It turns out that he is known for outright thieving other artists work and photos and creating his work from it. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were made off the “Hope” poster. However, the photographer that took the original photo Fairey traced over, has not been given a single cent.
Because of all this, I was inspired to create my own satirical version of the “Hope” poster. For a basis, I used a picture of Fairey. I don’t know the name of the photographer that took the picture of him, but fully intend to set aside 20% of all earnings from this image to give to them, should they come forward.
!Plagiarist belongs to the following groups:
Drawn to Cotton- Art on T-shirts, Graphic Arts, Humorous Illustrations ( NO PHOTOGRAPHY ) , Parody, Pop Art and Vector Goodness Lounge Available for sale asT-Shirts
ZAAAAP
Well played Neoelegance.. Well played.
Sam Dantone
Sarah Miller
I love this piece!
Ah, but don’t agree with Fairey being called a plagiarist. I’d call it an appropriation. That’s like calling Duchamp a plagiarist for L.H.O.O.Q.
But some people would probably call Duchamp a plagiarist :P
That’s ok if people disagree with me.
You’re great with a pen tool, by the way!
drawinghelps
LOVE it!
It also depends on how you look at it on plagiarism its an ongoing debate on creativity etc… But I do agree. A famous artist that adapted images for his own use would be Andy Warhol but I guess you could say his stuff is on a bit larger scale… Sorry corny joke.
neoelegance
I toyed with a number of words to use before I settled on “plagiarist” and I’m still not 100% that I picked the best word. I do realize now that I need to fix the spelling (doh) and re-upload the image.
I wouldn’t consider Duchamp to be a plagiarist. What he did was challenge what the public perceived as art. Did he create the original work? Not really, but he did shed a new light on the everyday object.
Warhol took what Duchamp did to the next level in a sense. He took the every day and shed a somewhat satirical light on it. Unfortunately, Warhol was also indirectly responsible for reality television and artists like Fairey.
Appropriation works, but only if credit (in some shape or form) is given to the original artist. Fairey doesn’t give credit to anyone but himself.
On another note, I actually use the pencil tool far more often than the pen tool, but thanks.
neoelegance
Just fixed my spelling mistake and changed the title appropriately. Also shrank the image down a little bit so it’s not nearly as massive on the front of the shirt anymore. Enjoy.
chelsgus
Oh that’s good!
Maybe do another – APPROPRIATOR – to keep both camps happy :P
jesseyuen
Yeah agreed, appropriation is the word. Didn’t a lot of the profits go toward the Obama campaign fund though?
neoelegance
I thought about it a little more and appropriation doesn’t really work. For what Fairey does to be appropriation, he would have to be “borrowing” work from outside the “art community” to create something new. The original photographers image was a work of art in its own right and was not changed by Fairey other than turning it into a graphic image. The only time this is enough is in the case of satire. He didn’t really change the meaning behind the image. He just traced over it in a computer program (probably Illustrator) and claimed it was his own. This is plagiarism. As for the money going to the Obama campaign, you would be correct. However, the original artist should have still received a cut of the money to do with as they saw fit.