The Obey Giant art campaign founded by Shepard Fairey RISD '92 started by accident. When he was a sophomore, Fairey was looking at a magazine for stencil ideas for a T-shirt when he stumbled upon a "funny wrestling ad" of Andre the Giant - the former pro wrestler popularized as the "gentle giant" after his appearance in the movie "The Princess Bride."
Fairey toyed with the image to create a stenciled face of Andre, delineated in bold black lines and tightly cropped in a black box. Stamped underneath the icon was the command: obey.
Fifteen years later, more than 1 million stickers and 15,000 posters of the Obey Giant icon have been posted around the world. What started as a test in reverse psychology that asked people not to blindly obey has now made Fairey one of the most popular street artists of his generation. The Obey Giant art campaign is one of the most ambitious in recent history.
Fairey's representation of Andre the Giant has become especially visible in recent years with the popularity of his Obey Giant clothing line. Obey Giant merchandise has been especially well-received in Asia, and Fairey has opened stores in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. His clothing is also sold in boutiques across the United States. In Providence, it is sold at RISD Works on 10 Westminster St., and occasionally at Urban Outfitters.
Even though the Obey Giant campaign started as something fun, over the years its message has evolved into an experiment of reawakening people's curiosity about their environment, Fairey said.
"To me now, it's symbolic of encouraging people to question what they're assaulted with," he said.
The icon did just that for Associate Professor of Political Science John Tomasi, who is a big fan of Obey Giant. He owns two T-shirts, a belt, several stickers and posters, all of which feature the logo.
Tomasi became interested in Obey Giant after seeing stickers of the icon posted all around Providence. He thought that the icon was the perfect "metaphor for danger of conformity at Brown," he said.
"Brown, being a welcoming place, has a price to be paid for that comfort, especially with regulation to individual freedom of thought," he said.
Tomasi gave out items of Obey Giant clothing as raffle prizes for the Free Your Mind Conference, an event he organized last month that addressed problems with Brown's ideology, in addition to social and political issues.
But before raffling the T-shirts off, Tomasi had them "doctored up" to instead spell out "disobey," he said.
Fairey said that once art is out in public, it's fair game for interpretation. In fact, it's what his art provokes people to do - to question.
"Things in public really do take on a life," he said.
Though Fairey identifies his art as freethinking and rebellious, he admits that it wasn't always this way. When he was little, his art used to be mostly still-lifes of tanks and airplanes. The conservative atmosphere of Charleston, S.C., where Fairey grew up, fostered that narrow way of making his art, he said.
But when he was 14 and became involved in the skateboarding and punk rock scene, he started to see art as a way of channeling his frustration. Like the musicians of the Sex Pistols and the Clash, Fairey wanted to "follow the path of least resistance" in his own art and to make art that "captured their spirits," he said.
At RISD, being exposed to artists who rejected tradition encouraged him to see art as a medium for social commentary. He became especially interested in screen printing, a printmaking technique that uses stencils to create a color image on fabric. This art form gave Fairey the "freedom to try more," he said.
Immediately after creating the Obey Giant logo, Fairey posted stickers of the icon all over Providence, even over advertisements for former mayor Vincent Cianci, to see how the public would react. The stickers drew a lot of attention from people who wondered what the sticker stood for. The hype inspired Fairey to spread his campaign to Boston and New York.
By his senior year at RISD, Fairey was already making Obey Giant T-shirts.
Much of his past and current projects have strong political messages that capture Fairey's personal beliefs. For example, on one shirt, Fairey, an anti-war advocate, depicts President George W. Bush holding a bomb. Next to the image is the message, "Or was it hug babies and drop bombs?"
Inspired by the high-contrast art of Jamie Reed, the graphics artist who created controversial album covers for the Sex Pistols, Fairey uses bold images accompanied by bold slogans in his work, to simplify the essence of what he is trying to convey.
"If anything, that's the principle I've adhered to - never compromise art by making it overly decorative for the sake of showing off my abilities," he said.
Fairey said this political and sometimes contentious art is cathartic for him, even though he recognizes that it has gotten him into trouble in the past.
Earlier this year, Fairey was charged with criminal mischief and trespassing for putting up one of his street images on a blank billboard in Manhattan's Chinatown. Despite the risk, Fairey said that exercising his right to free speech was worth getting arrested. Because "art should be for the masses, a utilitarian thing," it needs to be made accessible to the public, Fairey said. He tries to do this through his street art and clothing line, he said.
Critics say Fairey could be pushing his cause more effectively by engaging in political activism directly rather than through public art - some say his street art just comes down to a "stupid sticker," he said. But Fairey emphasized that he is an artist, not a politician, and that creating political art is the most effective way he can express his beliefs.
"The medium is the message," he said.
In reflection of his career, Fairey is planning to write a book that documents the Obey Giant campaign; its planned title is "Supply and Demand: 15 Years of Absurdist Propaganda." Currently, he is designing album covers for the musical groups Interpol, Black Eyed Peas and Billy Idol and showcasing some of his other artwork at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles.
