Boston Globe's Cartoonist Attacks Obama's Poster Artist

Note added Feb 7, 2008:

I put this post down for a while after completely reading the "Obey" article (linked at bottom of post), but after reading intelligent and less biased discourse over Fairey's current problems with AP trying to extort money from the artist for what should be fair use, I can see fair use all through Fairey's work and find the "Obey" author to be (and I hope this expression is not copyrighted) "full of crap".

Another thing to notice about the "Obey" article is the date of it. December 2007 when the Obama campaign was engaged in an electoral battle with a viscious crew of an opposing candidate, one Hillary Clinton.  And yes this type of crap does go on during campaigns.  The creepiness of the Hillary camp might have contributed to her loss.  And I'm even more satisfied now that the right person won the election, and since Fairey says he donated anything he got from the poster, I see nothing wrong with his fair use of work.  Fair use advances art.

My post follows:

This is incredible.

When I read that the man who created the iconic Obama poster is supposedly a plagiarist for using a style that was being done by everyone in the seventies,  I almost choked on my coffee. (Link to BG piece is at the bottom).

And it comes from the Boston Globe's political cartoonist who I used to think of as a liberal! 

The writer Dan Wassermann swears that Shepard Fairey is plagiarizing block style silk screen prints and neo-art nouveau posters (but like the block-style silk prints of the 70s, the art nouveau artists tended to copy one another -- at least in style-- and the 70s rework of art nouveau would be 'plagiarism' too if  we have called it that).

These are styles, generalized styles!!

 The writer (Dan Wasserman!) is possibly pissed because people 'sample' political cartoons very liberally for blogs. I can only see this venomous piece of 'analysis' coming out of an anger over some loss.  Political cartooning has gone down hill in the past decade.  I'm guessing that personal focus on "I, me, mine" is what poisoned the well for so many cartoonists' work.  Still I'm sure someone from the GOP planted some ideas somewhere here.    The top two commenters seem to know something about art.  I studied for a couple of years, myself and have been a fan of street sold art, so maybe I'm just not snooty enough, and don't keep myself to galleries where everyone claims to "own" art styles.

And the blog post that Wasserman linked to, is practically proof that he is easily swayed by "nifty ideas" that he hadn't thought himself before.  Wait, doesn't that make the Globe man a plagiarist?  The blog piece 

Wasserman should get an award for this smear piece. One that smells really bad.

See How phony is Shepard Fairey? 

An earlier diss on Fairey was published  at art-for-change (okay I'll throw them a few pennies) "Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey ".   

tags: political cartoonists  shepard fairey  plagiarism  art nouveau  obama posters  block prints  silk screen  obey campaign  andre the giant  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit