To show his support for Barack Obama, Los Angeles-based graphic designer Shepard Fairey created a large-scale, red, white and blue collage of the President-elect. From there, “Hope,” as he calls it, went viral. He printed posters and stickers of the portrait, and ardent Obama supporters tagged them on city buildings and car bumpers. He put a downloadable version of the design on the web, and others snagged it for t-shirts and signs. Literally, “Hope” has become the most recognizable image of the campaign, so much so that spoofs have cropped up with the faces of John McCain and Sarah Palin and words other than “Hope”—like “Nope”—on them. Not to mention, Time magazine commissioned a similar portrait from Fairey for its 2008 Person of the Year cover this past December. Washington, D.C. art collectors Heather and Tony Podesta recently donated Fairey’s original 60 by 44 inch collage to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, where it will be on display starting January 17.
You are a product of the urban street artist scene. The National Portrait Gallery isn’t exactly the street. Is it odd for you to see your work hung in a museum?
I’ve never really considered myself just a street artist, I consider myself a populist. I want to put my work in front of people by many different means; the street is one aspect. Commercial projects are another aspect, t-shirts, album packaging. Art shows and the institutions end up being the couriers for culture for the next generation and are an important component as well. It may seem ironic from one perspective, but I think if you look at my overall strategy, it’s actually not out of step. To me, to be validated by the Smithsonian is only possible because the grassroots populist efforts I made resonated to such a degree.
What specifically about the image do you think made people embrace it?
I think the main thing is that people were moved by Obama. Let’s face it. Obama is younger, he’s handsome. He’s half white, half black; he’s unique looking. I think that when you talk about making images, [the fact] that it’s not just another 65-year-old white guy helps. Most campaigns rely on photographs because the moment you do something that is a graphic interpretation where any artistic license has been taken I think a lot of people are scared that it’s going to be perceived as propaganda.
Propaganda has a negative connotation, which it partially deserves, but I think there is some propaganda that is very positive. I feel that if you can do something that gets people’s attention then maybe they’ll go and find out more about the person. My hope with my image was that if I made an iconic image of Obama that yielded both a recognizable portrait of him and something that seemed to transcend the limitations of a photograph -- something that felt like a passionate art piece and had an idealism to it that would reflect the idealism of the subject, then it could be a powerful tool.
To me, the qualities that I tried to make sure were in the image were vision, confidence, patriotism. The way I shaded the face half blue, half red—the convergence of the left and the right, the blue states and the red states. These are things that may be more subconsciously understood by the viewer, but I think they made the image powerful and people remembered it. But none of that would have mattered if people didn’t care about Obama. I just happened to make the right image at the right moment.