Shepard Fairey at the ICA

(Images from: www. images.google.com)

The ICA opened its Shepard Fairey exhibit last night and despite the snowstorm, hundreds of people were in attendance to hear him talk about his work at a standing-room only packed auditorium. Shepard has been an artist for the past 20 years, even though he appears to be no more than 30 years old. Shepard began his public style of street art while still a student at RISD; he has a strong belief art should be a part of the public landscape. He indicated his roots are humble, being a poor student, he had to buy rolls of discontinued wallpaper sheets to use as the background for his street art. His first iconic image was of a stamp of Andre the Giant. Since then, 20 years later, his style has evolved into what we recognize today (President Obama's official portrait is one that Fairey did during the campaign and the Smithsonian's National Gallery acquired the portrait). Something Shepard said about the nature and style of his work really resonated with us and that is that he utilizes the highly recognized Communist-style propaganda look for its easy visual identity and imagery. Given that his street art needs to compete with other bold advertising, he prefers this aesthetic which allows him to deliver benevolence in a sinister looking package, which he believes invokes a cautious cynicism for his audience to be wary of the sinister in a benevolent package. Take a close look at the pretty female images where there is a military element in the background or read the fine print in some of the more benevolent looking imagery and you'll see what he means. This is a "must-see" show for the art aficionados among us.


Given his show at the ICA opening this week, he has been in the Boston area creating new works. With the snow from the past 2 weeks, he indicated it was nice to be back in New England, snow at all..and that it was just like in the old days, the cold and possible police intervention, had him working at a faster pace again. For a map of where his outdoor works can be found, here is a link:

http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/exhibit/fairey/outdoor/


As an aside, he also has an image on the 2004 Kenwood Vineyards 30th Anniversary Artists Series bottles , which they served at the reception (2,100 cases made and the wine retails for about $70)- this guy is H-O-T right now!

Given his overall success and hotness factor right now, I decided to ask a Curatorial friend at the MFA his thoughts and he replied he liked the artist's work but wondered if it was the artwork or the images that would have the staying power... an interesting question to ponder, as we all race to get a limited edition of Shepard's book and 4 signed prints....