{"id":7282,"date":"2025-12-09T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/how-a-still-defiant-shepard-fairey-turned-punk-rock-attitude-into-30-years-of-activist-art\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T16:00:00","slug":"how-a-still-defiant-shepard-fairey-turned-punk-rock-attitude-into-30-years-of-activist-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/how-a-still-defiant-shepard-fairey-turned-punk-rock-attitude-into-30-years-of-activist-art\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Still-Defiant Shepard Fairey Turned Punk Rock Attitude Into 30 Years of Activist Art"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/LEADShepard_photo-Suitcase-JoeBTS-1.jpg\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" alt=\"Shepard Fairey. (Credit: Suitcase Joe)\"><figcaption>Shepard Fairey. (Credit: Suitcase Joe) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In the life and work of artist Shepard Fairey, social justice and the musical counterculture have always collided, igniting many of his most striking images.<\/p>\n<p>Most famously, they have come in the form of 18-by-24-inch posters, with messages against police violence, war, and government surveillance, and calling for peace, civil rights, and multiculturalism. There are also many portraits of Fairey\u2019s cultural heroes, among them Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols, Public Enemy, Black Flag, Andy Warhol, the Clash, Keith Haring, David Lynch, and Black Sabbath.<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/12\/altin-gun-new-album\/\">Altin G\u00fcn Salutes Ne\u015fet Erta\u015f On New Album<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/12\/repelicans-jon-ehrens-ponders-the-cosmos\/\">Repelican\u2019s Jon Ehrens Ponders the Cosmos<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/12\/roland-gift-on-she-drives-me-crazy-which-is-not-a-song-he-would-save-in-a-shipwreck\/\">Roland Gift on \u2018She Drives Me Crazy,\u2019 Which is Not a Song He Would Save in a Shipwreck<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>An exhibition of that work, <em>Shepard Fairey: Out of Print<\/em>, now at the <a href=\"https:\/\/beyondthestreets.com\/?srsltid=AfmBOopnHGFYdv-Un01QcrRLtLTMtmzO8i3x25tlPbRceKEGcjNqvG75\" target=\"_blank\">Beyond the Streets<\/a> gallery in Los Angeles, brings a vast selection of these now-rare posters back into public view. While Fairey long ago graduated to painting huge murals in his distinctive graphic style on the sides of buildings, the posters and the urgency of street art remain at the heart of his work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnybody that sees this show will see that there are consistencies for 30 years, but there\u2019s also a lot of evolution,\u201d says Shepard, who describes his core issues as \u201cracism, sexism, xenophobia, abuse of power, greed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a celebration of heroes, but there\u2019s also condemnation of villains like Bush or Nixon or Stalin or Mao, and they\u2019re all in there,\u201d he adds, noting that some viewers can be confused by his depictions of political leaders, like Saddam Hussein, as if he was celebrating them. \u201cIt\u2019s like, be careful who you put on a pedestal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With 421 pieces, dating from the mid-\u201990s to the present, it is the largest showing of his prints that Fairey has ever done in the U.S. The images tend to be high-contrast and minimal, with shades of red, blue, and gold, rooted in crisp graphic design and the visuals of Soviet-era agitprop.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_DEVO-Vote_2020.jpg\" alt=\"(Courtesy of Shepard Fairey\/Beyond The Streets)\" class=\"wp-image-649000\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_DEVO-Vote_2020.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_DEVO-Vote_2020-340x340.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_DEVO-Vote_2020-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_DEVO-Vote_2020-498x498.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Courtesy of Shepard Fairey\/Beyond the Streets)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The prints have the energy of activism and the spirit of various cultural archetypes and narratives where those overlap. One wall at the gallery is filled with a grid of faces that includes Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mot\u00f6rhead\u2019s Lemmy Kilmister, civil rights icon John Lewis, and Nirvana\u2019s Kurt Cobain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve taken that spirit of punk rock, that willingness to speak out, to not worry about whether you\u2019re out of step with mainstream tastes and opinions, and I\u2019ve tried to apply that in a bit of a more constructive way,\u201d Fairey says. \u201cI love NWA. I don\u2019t love the misogyny, but I love that they\u2019re just gloriously not giving a shit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While Fairey has his own gallery in Los Angeles, called Subliminal Projects, it is smaller and he has another upcoming show planned of his fine art there. So he turned to Beyond the Streets, the gallery founded by Roger Gastman to celebrate street art and other forms of urban culture.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Roger_Shepard_BTSphoto-Suitcase-Joe-1.jpg\" alt=\"Shepard Fairey and Roger Gastman, founder of Beyond the Streets. (Credit: Suitcase Joe) \" class=\"wp-image-649001\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Roger_Shepard_BTSphoto-Suitcase-Joe-1.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Roger_Shepard_BTSphoto-Suitcase-Joe-1-340x227.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Roger_Shepard_BTSphoto-Suitcase-Joe-1-240x160.jpg 240w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Roger_Shepard_BTSphoto-Suitcase-Joe-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Roger_Shepard_BTSphoto-Suitcase-Joe-1-498x332.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Shepard Fairey and Roger Gastman, founder of Beyond the Streets. (Credit: Suitcase Joe) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Fairey has known Gastman since 1998, and together they published <em>Swindle<\/em>,\u00a0 a magazine on art, lifestyle, politics, and fashion, for more than four years. On the magazine\u2019s covers, they put some of the same cultural heroes that Fairey has often depicted in his work.<\/p>\n<p>Across town in L.A., where Fairey is based, are three unfinished luxury towers, abandoned by Chinese developers, that have been taken over by graffiti artists, leaving their marks inside and out. The giant buildings have now stood there for years as a monument to out-of-control development on streets populated by the homeless and have become a canvas for any artist willing to climb 52 floors.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGraffiti is very alive and well in L.A., not just on those abandoned towers, but everywhere,\u201d says Fairey, 55. \u201cThat always makes me feel hopeful for what younger people are doing, how they are going to express themselves, whether it\u2019s legal or not, and say, <em>I exist<\/em>. Like, \u2018You don\u2019t want me to exist, but fuck you, I exist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While a student at Rhode Island School of Design in 1989, he began his \u201cAndre the Giant Has a Posse\u201d sticker campaign, which evolved into his larger Obey Giant guerrilla\u2011style street art project, and a large selection of those posters are included in <em>Out of Print<\/em>. The exhibit also displays the tools of his trade: brushes, X-acto knives, ink, cans of paint, stencils, rubylith masking film, wallpaper adhesive, pay stubs, worn-out sneakers, and \u201call the stuff that demonstrates to people the sort of DIY methodology that\u2019s the underpinning of everything I do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1059\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/OG-Sticker-VECTOR.jpg\" alt=\"(Courtesy of Shepard Fairey\/Beyond The Streets)\" class=\"wp-image-649031\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/OG-Sticker-VECTOR.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/OG-Sticker-VECTOR-340x300.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/OG-Sticker-VECTOR-768x678.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/OG-Sticker-VECTOR-498x439.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Courtesy of Shepard Fairey\/Beyond the Streets)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Against one wall in the gallery is a display of multiple vintage TVs, with flickering clips of the show\u2019s subject matter, documentary footage of Fairey in action, and live shots of visitors from surveillance cameras.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One poster on display is for his band N\u00f8ise, an electronic-alternative quartet that released an EP in 2016, sharing wall space given to the artist\u2019s punk rock obsessions: the Ramones, Bad Brains, Keith Morris, Misfits, OFF!, Henry Rollins, and more. On December 16, Fairey will appear for a 7:00 p.m. conversation with Circle Jerks founders Morris and Greg Hetson.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI admire Henry Rollins. I admire Steve Jones. I admire Chuck D. I admire the guys from Rage Against the Machine. And I\u2019ve ended up being able to work with a lot of them. And of course, it\u2019s very validating,\u201d Fairey says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I also realized is that the tendency for a lot of people\u2014including maybe me when I was younger\u2014was to think, \u2018Oh, these people are doing this thing. They get a lot of adulation. They got it handled.\u2019 But relative to the size of the population, it\u2019s a really small number of people that live what those people put into the world. \u2026 So I am now working with a lot of them knowing the realities of it. I feel that much more motivated to enroll people to actually just get involved and get off the couch.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_Strummer-Poster_2002.jpg\" alt=\"Joe Strummer. (Courtesy of Shepard Fairey\/Beyond The Streets)\" class=\"wp-image-648998\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_Strummer-Poster_2002.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_Strummer-Poster_2002-340x340.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_Strummer-Poster_2002-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_Strummer-Poster_2002-498x498.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Joe Strummer. (Courtesy of Shepard Fairey\/Beyond the Streets)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>One musical figure who towers above the rest for him was Joe Strummer of the Clash, represented at the gallery show on multiple posters. \u201cStrummer\u2019s my biggest hero ever,\u201d Fairey says of the revolutionary rocker, whose first-wave U.K. punk band was labeled \u201cthe only band that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The artist communicated with Strummer from a distance, and then missed out on what turned out to be his one chance to meet the musician before his death in 2002. Strummer was in L.A. visiting his label, Epitaph Records. \u201cI was invited to go down to Epitaph to hang out with him one day. I had some dumb corporate project due that day,\u201d he recalls. \u201cHe died six months later, and I never got to hang out with him. One of my biggest regrets in my whole life was I didn\u2019t say, \u2018I\u2019ll miss this deadline on this project and go hang out with Joe Strummer.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fairey\u2019s own notoriety soared in 2008 with his creation of the \u201cHope\u201d poster for Barack Obama\u2019s campaign for president, which now hangs at the Smithsonian\u2019s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1738\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Obama-Hope-2008-2022-REVISED-Web.jpeg\" alt=\"(Courtesy of Shepard Fairey\/Beyond The Streets)\" class=\"wp-image-649005\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Obama-Hope-2008-2022-REVISED-Web.jpeg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Obama-Hope-2008-2022-REVISED-Web-340x492.jpeg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Obama-Hope-2008-2022-REVISED-Web-768x1112.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Obama-Hope-2008-2022-REVISED-Web-1061x1536.jpeg 1061w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Obama-Hope-2008-2022-REVISED-Web-498x721.jpeg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">(Courtesy of Shepard Fairey\/Beyond the Streets)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s pros and cons to being known. Familiarity breeds contempt,\u201d Fairey says. \u201cAny mid-career artist is going to not be the hot new cause to celebrate. But I think where I\u2019m able to make up for that is that my spirit is just as defiant and punk as it was when I was 25 or 15. It might not be packaged in exactly the same way. But I also am happy that I have a broader audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA frustration I had when I was younger was that I felt like I was only connecting with people who agreed with me, who would say, yeah, everything sucks and give me a pat on the back, but then refuse to engage with the broader culture or the dominant system in a way that would change it for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While Fairey did create a similar poster in support of Kamala Harris in 2024, he\u2019s largely avoided depicting Donald Trump in his work. But one poster from Trump\u2019s first term is included in his L.A. show\u2014a collaboration with the band Franz Ferdinand, which is just a closeup of Trump\u2019s snarling mouth beneath the word \u201cDemogogue.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_Debbe-Harry-Zebra-Skin_2014.jpg\" alt=\"Debbie Harry. (Courtesy of Shepard Fairey\/Beyond The Streets)\" class=\"wp-image-649004\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_Debbe-Harry-Zebra-Skin_2014.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_Debbe-Harry-Zebra-Skin_2014-340x340.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_Debbe-Harry-Zebra-Skin_2014-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/11\/Shepard-Fairey_Debbe-Harry-Zebra-Skin_2014-498x498.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Debbie Harry. (Courtesy of Shepard Fairey\/Beyond the Streets)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI generally don\u2019t want to do anything of Trump because he\u2019s like a negative energy organism that just grows and mutates and spits off a new spore when he gets to claim he has been persecuted,\u201d Fairey says. \u201cI think that it\u2019s better to not even address him. I say he\u2019s the zit, and I\u2019d rather address the underlying bacteria.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fairey has just released a new poster called \u201cFall of Freedom,\u201d which depicts a handcuffed Statue of Liberty holding her hands to her face in despair beneath the words, \u201cIt can\u2019t happen here.\u201d The poster release is part of a national pro-Democracy initiative from the arts community that also includes the artists Robert Longo and Dread Scott.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere needs to be a popular uprising in the way that on the right there\u2019s been this populist support for oppression,\u201d Fairey argues. \u201cThere needs to be something not just equal and opposite, but superior and opposite from the progressive side of things. I think little statements from street art make people feel like, \u2018Okay, someone else is saying it. I can safely say it too.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shepard Fairey. (Credit: Suitcase Joe) In the life and work of artist Shepard Fairey, social justice and the musical counterculture have always collided, igniting many of his most striking images.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4721,4722,355,4723,1728,31,4394,4724,3580,1520,1792,24,4725,4113,4726],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andre-the-giant","category-andy-warhol","category-black-sabbath","category-bob-marley","category-devo","category-features","category-henry-rollins","category-joe-strummer","category-kurt-cobain","category-nirvana","category-public-enemy","category-pushly","category-shepard-fairey","category-the-clash","category-the-sex-pistols"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}