intellectual properties

consumer propaganda (or, the world has no longer has meaning)

as a follow-up to my last post on shepard fairey…..if other people don’t see this as selling out, i think my sense of irony is totally miscalibrated, and if that’s the case, i should just give up trying to discern anything meaningful about art or politics or culture and let the whole world roll over me like water off a duck’s back.

Consumers of the World Unite
By ERIC WILSON, New York Times
January 7, 2009

SHOPPING, these days, is a political act. If you are brave enough to buy a $2,000 Prada handbag, you might rationalize that you are helping to stimulate the economy. Solidarity, people!

Saks Fifth Avenue, which has surely felt the recession’s sting, is taking just such a fist-raising stand with its spring marketing. The campaign is inspired by the bold graphic designs and propaganda spirit of Constructivist art — although it is intended to be tongue-in-cheek.

The store hired Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the stylized Hope poster of Barack Obama that became one of the most highly visible, though unofficial, images of the presidential campaign, to design its catalog covers and shopping bags. They bear a rather unsubtle allusion to advertisements made in the 1920s for state-run department stores in the Soviet Union. Continue reading »

Filed in art, culture and random linkage | Tagged with propaganda, selling out, shepard fairey | Comments (5)

“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:

“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