Art for art's sake

Shepard Fairey’s work in his own words. After the Read More.

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Wikipedia’s article on Fairey mentions the controversy concerning his use of images from other sources.

Fairey was questioned about criticism surrounding his use of images from social movements, specifically images created by artists of color, in an interview with Liam O’Donoghue for Mother Jones. O’Donoghue later posted an article, titled “Shepard Fairey’s Image Problem”, on several independent media sites. The article explored Fairey’s use of copyright protected images while at the same time defending his copyright protected works from being used by other artists and corporations. Fairey cited his collaboration with Public Enemy, his funding of the Zapatistas movement, and his six-figure charitable contributions for Darfur assistance as counterpoints to the charges of exploitation. “I challenge anybody to fuck with that, know what I mean,” Fairey stated. “It’s not like I’m just jumping on some cool rebel cause for the sake of exploiting it for profit. People like to talk shit, but it’s usually to justify their own apathy. I don’t want to demean anyone’s struggles through casual appropriation of something powerful; that’s not my intention.”

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