AP answers Shepard Fairey pre-emptive lawsuit, accuses artist of infringement

This guy is a total thief. Dug his work until I found out that none of his work is his.

See this link for a breakdown of all his "work". Terrible.

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

Thanks for the link to the Vallen article — I'd read that a while back and forgotten about it.

Not really a Fairey fan, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Seems to me that the ruling is going to be pretty subjective if the whole thing winds up being about "does it qualify as a new piece of art?".

I admit, I'm kinda on the fence on this one.

Yeah thanks for both of those links you gave, I hadn't seen the Vallen article (also linked by Yankees) nor the response, both worth aread. This is from the response link: http://www.justseeds.org/blog/2007/12/a_response_to_obey_plagiarist_1.html

I understand that Fairey is not simply using social movement history and other artists work, but immensely profiting off it. One important thing to acknowledge is that Fairey is not just appropriating, but also copyrighting images that exist in our common history. Posters and graphics made in the heat of political struggles are often made by anonymous individuals or groups that want to keep the images in the public domain for use in further struggle. It is unfortunate that Fairey is attempting to personally capitalize on the generosity of others and privatize and enclose the visual commons (as seen by the prominent copyright symbols on his website and products). But once again, this is the machinations of capitalism, not simply Fairey as an individual. Can Nike profit from social movements but not Fairey? How about a supposedly "good" corporation, like one that makes windmills or solar panels?

The comments in the jmacphee response are also well worth a read. It seems to me that Fairey is a cynical bastard using the premptive suit to gain even wider recognition.

I've used to think that Fairey's idea all along was to recycle past struggles imagary to send the signal that the current struggle is consumerism, but then he went and turned it into a shop and made political posters for Obama (which in hindsight is as iconic as the Angela Davis poster he ripped off), now I don't know. His constant and as the lawyers say, aggressive defending of of any "Obey the X" or similar images to him also signal that he is simply in it for the money. It's OK for him to regurgitate older art to "make a comment", but nobody can regurgitate his to make a comment?

While we're at it, somebody should really sue that Andy Warhol guy. That Campbell soup can was clearly an infringement on Campbells owned intellectual property, and his Marilyn was based on a photo of her that he did not take!