Shepard Fairey Did Not Rip-Off The AP (But He Did Rip-Off John Carpenter)

Shepard Fairey, the artist probably best known for his iconic Hope Obama posters, couldn't talk about the lawsuit with AP surrounding that image still dragging at a talk on Sunday at the Brooklyn Museum, but he did shed some light on the origins of his other most famous image: that of the wrestler Andre the Giant. And, to hear Fairey tell it, it's a wonder movie director John Carpenter hasn't also hit him with copyright lawsuit.

Obey GiantFairey considers his experiment with a newspaper photo of Andre the Giant -- an inherently meaningless image he has been plastering all over the world since 1989 as a way of challenging the public to question what they see (especially in advertising and politics) -- a success because of the many ways in which it has been interpreted. Fairey says the evolution of the Andre the Giant has a Posse sticker was subtly influenced by another '80s WWF superstar: Rowdy Roddy Piper and the film "They Live," in which the former wrestler starred. Piper's character comes into possession of sunglasses which allow him to see that in reality the billboards and advertisements littering the landscape are actually directives of control such as "Marry and Reproduce," "No Independent Thought,"  "Consume," "Conform," and, of course, "Obey," which obviously struck a chord with Fairey, who has been sticking the word under Andre the Giant and just about everything else for the better part of the last two decades.

Because they are lacking a clear agenda or meaning the "Obey" images freak some people out, said Fairey, but they are meant to. He wonders why those people don't question the advertising that surrounds them more often. And to those who call street art vandalism or pollution, he says that he doesn't see the difference between it and advertising. And tolerance toward both should be an all or nothing proposition, as far as he's concerned. "If there's no street art," he says, "then there should be no adverting either."