Shepard Fairey Limited Edition

... —and humorous—images would bring if they were found everywhere. Taking his cue from Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum that “The medium is the message,” he posted his stickers on everything from brick walls to telephone poles. The world became his gallery. A sensation was being born. In 2004, along with his friend Roger Gastman, Shepard Fairey founded a quarterly arts and culture magazine known as Swindle, which Fairey and Gastman have attempted to make as memorable and non-disposable as major art books. “It’s kind of like my art,” Fairey says, “where there’s a range of styles and subject matter, from political topics to art, fashion, and humor.” Shepard Fairey is ambivalent about his influences, although he claims the propaganda poster work of Russian artist Alexander Rodchenko as an obvious basis for much of his work. He instead indentifies the Sex Pistols, Black Flag, and Public Enemy as greater influences, believing that music is a much more engaging experience than art. “This harsh reality,” Fairey says, “provides the challenge to make my art as much of an engaging, stimulating, provocative, visceral experience as possible.” It’s a challenge that Fairey has answered with a virtuosic display of determination: his visions and accomplishments are nothing short of phenomenal.