“The Medium is the Message”. yes. yes it is.
well, this is more than a little disconcerting.
shepard fairey, a political street artist i’ve long admired and whose art i recently even considered getting tattooed on my body, seems to have really sold out (as jon notes in the comments, he did corporate art work before).
i noted that Obey Giant recently launched a clothing line. it seemed a little odd to me that a voice against social conformity and for revolution – i mean – “OBEY” – come on. – was suddenly selling miniskirts and skinny jeans and handbags, but whatever.
i didn’t want to be hyper-judgemental about the fact that the obey clothing line is obviously catering to current hipster trends. “hipster” is always challenge to try to define, although you know one when you see one, but IMO hipsters can most generically be defined as people who follow along with whatever is hip. and hip changes every, oh, 30 seconds. so the idea of this Revolutionary catering to this group seems……trendy. i mean, yes, the hipster group as a target market has a lot of cache in terms of perpetuating a trend, and a lot of money. so if you want to pick a target market to spread your meme as quickly as possible, obviously it’s the best choice.
so then, spreading the word to Gen Y/ Gen O using their most common mode of participation – consumerism: is it possible to do so without crossing over to the dark side? my gut was still sinking looking at the obey clothing website, and so i defaulted to considering what, to me, is one of the most basic metrics of determining whether someone has, in fact, “sold out”: production.
—–Original Message—–
From: amy.leblanc
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 11:54 AM
To: service@obeyclothing.com
Subject: where is obey clothing made?
sorry if you have an FAQ on your site somewhere, but i can’t find it…..
—–REPLY—–
From: “OBEY Clothing”
To: “‘amy.leblanc’”
Subject: RE: where is obey clothing made?
Hi Amy,
Most of our product is made in China; however, our tee shirts are all made
in the U.S.A. Hope this helps and thanks for the support.
Thanks~
service@obeyclothing.com
SHOP.OBEYCLOTHING.COM
www.obeyclothing.com
—–RESPONSE—–
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:12:24 -0800
To:
From: “amy.leblanc”
Subject: RE: where is obey clothing made?
hm. that’s a bit hard to reconcile.
thx.
—–
HEY SHEPARD FAIREY: CARE TO RATIONALIZE OUTSOURCING IN THE CONTEXT OF THE MESSAGE OF YOUR ART? AND IN THE CONTEXT OF “HOPE” and “CHANGE” and “PROGRESS” FOR AMERICA?
or maybe your message has never been what we believed it to be, and all you really did was “cynically turned graffiti culture into a self-promoting ad campaign, turning street art into a cheap hustle that is no different from corporate advertising” (erick lyle).
le sigh.
.
.
related:
Filed in art, culture and random linkage, most linked/commented on | Tagged with propaganda, selling out, shepard fairey | Comments (14)“When a right-wing Republican is the one concocting your anti-Establishment image, you start to wonder if the entire hipster movement has been duped into becoming puppets of Hayne’s billionaire income. Because if we’re all suckers, that just sucks.” –nymag
14 Responses to ““The Medium is the Message”. yes. yes it is.”
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Based on the Wiki entry you link:
Fairey was a founding partner along with Dave Kinsey and Phillip DeWolff of the design studio BLK/MRKT Inc. from 1997-2003 which specialised in guerilla marketing, and “the development of high-impact marketing campaigns.”[8] Clients included Pepsi, Hasbro and Netscape[8] (for whom Fairey designed the red dinosaur version of mozilla.org’s logo and mascot).
So it sounds like he has been commercial for some time.
yes, i know, but somehow the Made in China hipster clothing line really jumps the shark for me.
The clothing line has been around for a minute. I remember buying something for my skaterat little brother at least 4 years ago. I don’t know how I feel about “selling out” in this sense. Can you imagine being a street artist SCAD grad offered bank for a clothing line? I would have probably jumped at the chance. Also, he has severe diabetes (he has an insulin pump) and is losing his sight. I am sure he is trying to make as much cash off his art as possible. To be fair, he appropriated the propaganda style and used it for things that were not propaganda. I think it’s only recently that he has used it for politics. I think that’s one of the coolest things about the Obama image: it is symbolic of involving young, cynical people in politics. Before, his art was reaction against politics.
Also.. Teh clothes…thay iz cute.
right, Miu, the t-shirts have been around for a good while, and as their customer service email response states, the t-shirts are made in the U.S. it’s the weird full-on head-to-toe clothing line that is new, and IMO, a divergent interest.
as for him being sick: my life-partner-in-crime is also an insulin dependent diabetic, and i know how much it costs to maintain, and potentially how much it can cost when diabetes complications kick in. i don’t however accept that as an excuse. there are plenty of ways for an artist as high-profile as shepard fairey to make money without putting his logo all over skinny jeans made in china.
The concept of selling out is interesting to me. It is hard to define what selling out is (vs. making an appropriate living). One person’s sell out is another person’s paying the rent. I am not defending it. Scott Adams (Dilbert) sold out. Matt Stone and Trey Parker (South Park) sold out. But when? When they first accepted money for their art? When they accepted A LOT of money for their art? When they merchandised? It is not clear to me. Also, some folks who should know better over look issues involved which are obvious to others (Al Gore eats meat, for example) and it leaves you wondering whether these people are hypocrites, uniformed, or sell outs. I am not arguing against your being ill at ease with this China made clothing at all. I am just genuinely confused and fascinated by the concept of selling out. Money sucks… the rest is just a matter of degree.
it is a tough line to draw jon, but to me, the point of selling out is not that you’ve sold something for money. i understand that artists need to make money, and selling your art for money is not wrong. i’d love it if more of our consumer culture revolved around making, buying, and selling art to one another. in fact, it’s a large part of my community and how i spend my time in SF and i support art as a business wholeheartedly.
to me, “selling out” is not simply about exchange of currency. it is about compromising your integrity, your values, and what you/your art stands for in exchange for currency. in this case, fairey’s art had a very “rage against the machine” and pro-american democracy message, and now suddenly there’s outsourcing to china. that, to me, is selling out. call it a hard line position, but that’s how i see it.
By saying that Fairey is compromising his integrity, values and what his art “stands for”…you’re purporting to actually know and understand the complexity of these notions.
I don’t think that’s as much of a hard line as it is overly simplistic when applied to art and artists.
Once the work exists and is finished, it is inherently “outside” of the artist, anyway. There is no one single “true” meaning. And the interpretations can change over time, generations, between viewers, groups, etc.
I don’t believe in the concept of selling out, I just believe in art.
If you’re going to dog him as a businessman outsourcing to China, do that. There is the art and there is the business of the art. They are wedded, but not inextricable.
-Holden
“There is the art and there is the business of the art.”
agreed. however, the question i have then is that once an artist becomes a businessperson, is it inappropriate to expect them to keep consistent value systems between the two? i understand the part about art being “outside” an artist once it is released; you can’t control how people interpret it or what someone else may do with it. you seem to suggest that once an artist becomes a businessperson, though, that they also relinquish some of that control, due to the “forces of business”. that is where i think more artists could be a bit more stalwart and not let their marketing/branding teams push their business out to a point that it conflicts with their personal and artistic values.
thx for your input; i’m sure a lot more artists would have a lot to say about this as well.
Years ago Carly Simon said she regretted selling “anticipation” to Heinz Ketsup for a quarter of a million dollars (and god I hope I am not the only one old enough to remember that song/ad campaign). She said it was a tough time in her life and she wanted to make some changes and the offer was good so she did it. But she felt bad about it later. So clearly this selling out thing is hard even for the artists themselves to reconcile and identify (at least to identify in time to prevent it).
But to the point of compromising values and integrity, Hell I do that every day for money (and I know I am not alone). It is called a job. If I could sell out for more money doing something I actually enjoy rather than sell out for less money doing something I mostly hate, I’m not sure I could resist. And yet I too cringe when I see an artist I admire “stoop so low” as to sell a song to some evil corporation. Isn’t driving to work selling out? Isn’t talking to someone professionally when you know they are evil and really deserve a swift kick in the crotch selling out? Is giving one of my employees time of during deer season so he can go hunting instead of firing his ass for even asking if he can go hunting selling out? If selling out is “compromising my integrity and values” then I would say it is. I am just not selling out for enough money to attract anyone else’s attention.
it’s true. we all sell out, in some shape or form, all the time – some people every day when they go to jobs they don’t like for a paycheck (i am fortunate enough to work for a job i believe in, and i’d like to think that i would never do otherwise), other people when they support the corp that they know isn’t good to get the thing they think will make their life better, whatever. so yes, perhaps it’s wrong of me to hold artists to such a high standard, but again, like i said, this wasn’t any artist. this was an artist who touted revolution.
[...] Leblanc takes on the same subject with a twist in here post “The Medium is the Message” as she questions political street artist Shepard Fairey’s (Obey) expanded clothing line, [...]
“selling out” is such a distracting phrase.
the question is more of a matter of integrity.
if you’re an artist with a message, your business practices shouldn’t come in conflict with your artistic message unless you’re trying to be self ironic, which I know shepard is trying to do with the clothing line, but is highly unlikely trying to do with the made in china thing.
outsourcing to a country that has serious labor rights violations is a serious violation of his integrity unless he can get things together and do fair trade with china. that’d be awesome if it happens.
slightly related musicians with integrity over on my site: http://www.jedimindtrix.net/?p=148
thanks for this lesson. didn’t know these facts about fairey. food for thought for sure.
this is personally interesting to me as a recent music compilation i posted online was packaged with his art exclusively. (contact me if you want the link, i don’t want it posted visibly here) in light of these details about fairey, it seems i may have been somewhat unintentionally ironic in the essay i wrote to go along with the compilation. see, one of the topics i explored is the fact that we don’t always think carefully about the stimuli which we choose to absorb every day. of course the underlying controversy in this case is *deeply* embedded and well … not exactly fully fleshed out. (do you for instance have evidence of the nature of the business dealings are with the manufacturers in china? or are we assuming they are as unfair as, say, Gap?)
this brings a question to my mind of responsibility. in myself as a media consumer and redistributor, to what extent should i be held accountable for fully understanding the intricacies of what i support or choose not to support? the world is complex. i already have way more on my todo list than i can ever hope to experience/accomplish in my life. i choose to dig deep with one thing (in the case of my compilation, with researching MIA), but potentially miss another.
and then what about fairey, the producer of the art? as his name gets bigger and people want to license his work, etc, to what extent should he be held accountable for fully understanding what those people are all about (their views, associations, past dealings etc) before moving ahead? how deep should he go?
on the point of your post specifically, i agree that if it’s known for sure that fairey is funding unfair labor (but i *really* want to see that we’ve done due dilligence concerning this point), then, well, this is something he *should* have caught. he might be a busy busy man, but if it is his company that is ordering manufacturing of thousands of garments, he should stick himself in the particular loop of deciding and monitoring where and how that outsourcing takes place.