Shepard Fairey and the Phenomenon of Street Art
For the longest time, art in its visual form has only been seen in galleries, museums and enclosed spaces where people expect it to be. And that’s how it always was, up until artists began to find another medium to display their art: the streets. When street art first began, it was only seen as an act of vandalism. It has been and still is discredited by other visual artists and art critics. Heck, street artists are rarely featured in art history books at all. In this article, I am going to write about one of the most infamous street artists of all time, Shepard Fairey. Although street art is often criticized for being a form of vandalism rather than an art form, Shepard Fairey’s art as a whole has created not only a social movement in itself but also has a deeper, more contextual meaning to explore.
Let’s start from the beginning. Studying as a freshman at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989, Shepard Fairey had a spur of the moment idea. It all started with a Xeroxed screen print of professional wrestler Andre The Giant’s head, which Fairey then made into small, square stickers. Written on the sticker were two simple taglines “Andre the Giant has a posse” and “7’4” 520 lbs.” (fig.1). At first, Fairey used the sticker to merely decorate his skateboards and the city, passing them onto his friends to do the same. Over time, he modified the design to say one…
