Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand at ICA/Boston

Shepard Fairey and Pedro Alonzo

On Tuesday, February 3rd the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston hosted a private preview reception for renowned street artist Shepard Fairey in celebration of his first museum survey to an audience of 700. On Friday night the show opened to sold-out OBEY Experiment, which Shepard Fairey was scheduled to DJ. Fairey was arrested on his way to the ICA for two outstanding warrants, The Boston Globe reported-a testament to his devotion to both his art and his message.

Co-curated by ICA guest curator Pedro Alonzo and Emily Moore Bouillet, former curator at the ICA, the 20-year career retrospective Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand examines prevailing themes in Fairey’s work from propaganda to portraiture, visual communications from polarized political opinion to musical influences. Above all, Shepard Fairey’s artwork and design challenges the individual to “question everything,” from the overt benevolence of society to its subtle dissidence. Shepard expanded on this discourse in a curatorial presentation and interview with Pedro Alonzo held in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater. “I’m a populist,” he says, when asked about his public art activism and street art, the most influential being his ‘Andrew the Giant has a Posse’ and Barack Obama HOPE poster campaigns. Fittingly, these two iconic campaigns bookend Shepard’s roots and current activism. Alonzo elaborated, placing Fairey’s art in cultural context describing his grass-roots street and public art experiments as a pre-internet boom viral marketing campaign.

As his Obey Giant message reverberates, “the medium is the message.” With Shepard’s 20-year retrospective, we are challenged to analyze the public realm as it existed for the artist beginning in 1989 and over the years to our modern society. Because the artist has remained consistent with his approach and mastery of technique, digital accessibility have only aided in proliferating his message.  Shepard explains his method as “a barrier free way to communicate with the public – the aesthetic equivalent of freedom of speech.” Ultimately, Fairey succeeds in creating the street art dialogue he seeks between both “advocates and adversaries.” It’s a dialogue that will continue to remain in flux and be at the forefront of cultural and consumer conscious so long as street artists (and all artists in general) as dynamic as Shepard Fairey continue to create, circulate and be seen by the public eye. – Debra

All photos by Debra E. Anderson, copyright 2009