13 Comments

1. Dave D.:

..Mr. Fairey claims he will be the first to criticize Mr. Obama. He’s a little late.

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:19 pm 2. Marty:

1. Gee, a self-importance to rival Obama!

2. Why should anyone believe anything he says?

Oct 18, 2009 - 7:35 pm 3. Tcobb:

#2 Marty
In our modern day culture narcissism is its own reward. Its a virtue. Its that virtue that you’re not supposed to identify by its true name. That would be crass–it might sound like a defect rather than a virtue-and most importantly it might hurt someone’s feelings, the one true sin of our times.

Oct 18, 2009 - 8:30 pm 4. Norm:

2nd clip at 20 seconds: …found a photo, illustrated it, and had it in production the very next day.

Oh Joseph, Joseph Cannon, are you there?

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:14 pm 5. myna:

In other news, Shepard was found lying.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:43 pm 6. Lifeofthemind:

The Rhode Island School of Design, that produced Fairey, has an excellent reputation. Talking Heads came out of RISD. Part of the problem may be that students in the Arts and Humanities, like students in the Sciences and Engineering now tend to get a narrow technical education. The Common Core, all those Dead White Males, was gutted and disposed of a generation ago. That is true even at Chicago and Columbia. Obama as a transfer did not get any exposure to Columbia’s Core program.

The Technical and Hard Science graduates no longer get exposed to the cultural legacy of the people they will be designing building or exploring for. Carl Sagan, whatever his politics, was right that the role of a scientist includes communicating, and that necessitates being steeped in the audiences culture. Robert Oppenheimer’s knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita reassured both his professional colleagues and the greater audience that he was more than a technician with a big bomb and in so doing increased support for America’s new role as a nuclear power.

The Arts and Letters graduates are also now increasingly schooled in technique without content. They no longer are expected to learn how the world works. How then can they write meaningful poetry, prose, music or create illustrations, even non-representational ones, that communicate anything to an audience? As an example while I am a terrible at mathematics I did realize that the Calculus belongs in the Humanities. It is a new language and once you grasp the key concepts then you have experienced a paradigm shift. An artist who lacks that experience is as crippled in my estimation as a painter who is colorblind or a musician who is tone deaf.

Ideally all should be schooled in some basic knowledge of how the world works and more importantly, how people work. Unless your goal is to perform a purely onanistic exercise in exploration for its own sake, like the fabled wealthy Mad Scientist working away in a remote laboratory, everyone needs to do creative work with some understanding of what it all means to people. A basic knowledge of History and Economics and Anthropology would make for better Artists and better Engineers and Scientists. Some familiarity with physical laws and human expression would also make for better Economists and Historians.

My secret regret is that I was never good enough at the mathematical courses. I still shudder at the memory of being introduced to Schrodinger’s equations in freshman chemistry. That was in the supposedly non-calculus version of the class. The Queen of all disciplines has always seemed to me to Architecture because it demands the most well rounded education.

Oct 18, 2009 - 9:47 pm 7. NahnCee:

With that last name, the lad is obviously scarred for life. It’s better just to avert one’s eyes like you’d do with a scarred burn victim and ignore him until he self-destructs physically as well as mentally.

Oct 18, 2009 - 10:21 pm 8. feeblemind:

Obviously no Universities teach Ethics anymore. It doesn’t seem to matter what the profession is, the attitude seems to be ‘it is OK if I can get away with it’. Today it is ‘thinking outside the box’, and if the the other guy is dumb enough to believe when lied to or to allow money to be stolen from his pocket, well then it is OK. It is the chump’s fault. Not the con-man’s.

Oct 19, 2009 - 6:26 am 9. Mark:

Fairey: “Obama is a work of art.” Art about art. Art for Art’s sake.

Hmmm.

In some sense Obama’s a work of art. In some sense an idol.

Totalitarian regimes always have known how to portray the Leader as an idol/icon. They transfer the experience and emphases of religious art to the secular subject.

The approach of the artists in presenting totalitarian art seems to work, and people keep getting drawn to it.

There must be some good studies of political-religious iconography in democractic elections. Maybe these studies would be in psychology? There’s a stimulus-response phenomenon involved.

Oct 19, 2009 - 8:08 am 10. woosen:

Quote should have been: “Obama is a piece of work.”

Oct 19, 2009 - 10:36 am 11. wws:

Hmmph. You people just do NOT realize that Mr. Fairey is the ur-realization of the uber-corporate contextualization of what passes for modern artistic sensibilities, turning the hypocrisy inherent in modern capitalism back in on itself in a riotous feedback loop of adulation, greed, and fear. The clearly derivative nature of his work intentionally invites criticism from those who still refuse to see the falsehood inherent in the very nature of modern life and thus pre-emptively anticipates and mocks that criticism, just as the artists choice of a name anticpates and mocks those who would seek to cast aspersions on the homo-erotic nature of his work.

Philistines, the lot of you.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:50 am 12. mac:

Damn, wws,

This Philistine never saw anybody stick their tongue a YARD deep in their cheek before!

Oct 19, 2009 - 1:25 pm 13. wilbur:

Not surprising after what he did to Andre the Giant. RIP big fella.

Oct 19, 2009 - 11:00 pm

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