Obama artist Shepard Fairey admits to wrongdoing in AP lawsuit

By GottaLaff

Hopeless:

Fairey said in a statement issued late Friday that he knowingly submitted false images and deleted others in the legal proceedings, in an attempt to conceal the fact that the AP had correctly identified the photo that Fairey had used as a reference for his "Hope" poster of then-Sen. Barack Obama.

Well now, that's disappointing.

He added: "I am very sorry to have hurt and disappointed colleagues, friends, and family who have supported me in this difficult case and trying time in my life."

Fairey's statement said he regretted that his actions would distract from the issue of fair use for artists. "Regardless of which of the two images was used, the fair use issue should be the same," he said.

Artist Shepard Fairey's Studio Tagged with Anti-ACORN Graffiti

Really, it makes you wonder about people's logic capabilities. What the hell does Fairey have to do with ACORN?

So much for HOPE. That, at least, is the symbolic message sent by an anti-ACORN activist or group that targeted Studio Number One in Los Angeles, the commercial design studio of Obama HOPE poster creator Shepard Fairey, with anti-ACORN graffiti.

(snip)

The anonymous anti-ACORN activist or activists tried to link the anti-poverty group to the man who helped create the iconic image of the Obama campaign by targeting his studio with an image of the ACORN logo beneath the words "ACORN Funded Prostitution Zone."

Studio Number One does not receive any funds from the government, according to a spokesman, and does no work for ACORN.

"While we support free expression, it is ironic that...the conservatives and right-wingers who called pro-Obama art propaganda and if it was posted publicly, they called it vandalism, are now vandalizing private property in their campaign against ACORN," said Jay Strell, a spokesman for Studio Number One and Fairey. The graffiti has been removed, he added.

The Fairey tale continues: Artist sues AP

By GottaLaff

Lawsuit v. Lawsuit:

An artist whose poster of Barack Obama became an iconic image of the 2008 presidential campaign filed a lawsuit against the US news agency the Associated Press (AP) on Monday.

Los Angeles artist Shepard Fairey and his Obey Giant Art Inc. claimed in the suit, filed in US District Court in Manhattan, that his use of an AP photograph to create the poster was not a violation of copyright law.

In his suit, Fairey acknowledged using an AP photograph of Obama from April 2006 to create the poster of Obama tinted in red, white and blue and staring into the sky above the word "HOPE."

But Fairey's lawyers said the artist had created an "image that creates powerful new meaning and conveys a radically different message that has no analogue in the original photograph."

I believe in Faireys.

Shepard Fairey, of Obama poster fame, arrested in Boston

By GottaLaff

Photo by Matt Stone

First, copyright issues, and now this. Do you believe in Faireys?

A street artist famous for his red, white and blue "Hope" posters of President Obama was arrested in Boston, where he was wanted on warrants for tagging property with graffiti.

Shepard Fairey, 38, was arrested Friday night on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art.[...]

Two warrants were issued for Fairey on Jan. 24 after police determined he’d tagged property in two locations with graffiti based on the Andre the Giant street art campaign from his early career, Boston Police Officer James Kenneally said Saturday.

Fairey, of Los Angeles, is scheduled to be arraigned on the misdemeanor charges Monday in Brighton District Court, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk District Attorney. Wark said Fairey would also be arraigned on a default warrant related to a separate graffiti case in the Roxbury section of Boston. [...]

The museum described the reason for Fairey’s arrest as "his efforts posting his art in various areas around the city."

"We believe Shepard Fairey has made an important contribution in the history of art and to popular thinking about art and its role in society," the statement said. "We are enthusiastic to be working with him and are pleased to be showing the first museum retrospective of his work."

The museum said Fairey was released a few hours after his arrest, but that could not immediately be confirmed by authorities. A California lawyer who has represented Fairey in the copyright case didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the arrest.

Ginny Delany, who was at the ICA Friday night, told The Boston Globe that Fairey’s arrest "makes him even more of a hero to me."

"The fact that he is arrested for his art shows that it is meaningful to him and he cares about what he is doing," said Delany, a graduate student from Cambridge.

Maybe... just maybe... if we clap three times, this will all go away.

AP Wants Credit and Compensation for Iconic Obama Image

Methinks that horse has left the barn. Wonder if they'll go after the Obamicons.

NEW YORK- On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: A pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.

Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.

The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.

The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.

The mystery of the Obama Hope photo source

By GottaLaff

James Danziger, over at the Daily Beast, found the original photographer of the now-famous image used in the Fairey poster of Obama that we've all Obamicon'd. The guy had no idea it was his photo:

Reuters was initially—and understandably—put out that they hadn’t been credited as the original source of what turned out to be the presidential campaign’s most enduring visual image, but no laws had been broken.

Like it or not, Fairey's use of the picture is well within the parameters of what’s considered "fair use." His transformation of the image—flipping and re-orienting it, adding jacket, tie and the "O" Obama logo, and converting it to his block print style—make it consistent with all legal precedents for public use. (Fairey is the artist behind the now-famous Andre the Giant prints that are probably wheat-pasted all over your city.)

But perhaps the best proof that Fairey transformed the photo into something all his own is that Young, a Washington-based photographer who has taken, in his words, “thousands” of pictures of Obama, was not even aware that the most ubiquitous image of the election was based on his photograph. He’d seen the HOPE poster countless times and never made the connection to his own photograph, which he snapped at a 2007 Senate confirmation hearing.

Go read the whole article to follow the winding trail to the oblivious photographer. Imagine, not realizing it was your photo that was plastered everywhere on the Blogosphere and well, everywhere else.

I may take credit for an updated version of the Mona Lisa. I'll give her a new outfit, flip and re-orient, add a touch of make-up to her sly smile, and block print it. I could make a fortune! Anyone else in?

It would be like putting lipstick on a painting.

Obama: A work of art

By GottaLaff

Just days before Barack Obama moves into his new home, his portrait did the same: workers installed artist Shepard Fairey's ubiquitous painting of the president-elect in the National Portrait Gallery Saturday.

It's really happening. I still can't seem to grasp that completely.