This is a belated post. Saturday afternoon (pre-mochi), we actually went to see the Shepard Fairey show at the ICA. Here are my random thoughts:

By and large, it was a very predictable show. We saw an abundance of visual tropes inspired by war propaganda depicting activist/culture-jamming themes in a super-flat, high-contrast style. We also saw a preoccupation with sumptuous Asian and Middle-Eastern decorative motifs, as well as those spirograph-like things on money. But none of this is meant in a disparaging way. There were several things that I found amazing about the show.

For one, he has an amazing uniformity to his work. Usually when you go to see a big one-person retrospective like this, the several rooms are each devoted to a different period of the artist’s developing career, and you can see each room as encapsulating a new idea or new territory that they have explored. For Fairey, you can sense that they have tried to organize his work around a few themes—music, war, “early work,” and so on—but for the most part it seems like he found his mature style right away and then stuck to it. On the one hand, I could see why some disillusioned critics say he’s a “one-trick pony,” but on the other, this consistency has allowed him to get ridiculously good at what he does. If there’s nothing else to take away from this show, you could definitely still marvel at the man’s dogged, single-minded pursuit of the possibilities afforded by red, black, and off-white (and sometimes other colors too).

Honestly, it is amazing how good he is both technically and compositionally. He clearly has a good handle on graphic design (despite what some folks might say about him not being a “legit” designer). I furthermore am bordering on appalled at how perfectly flawless the screenprints are (yes, even given the fact that many of them were executed by apprentice-lackeys, but you would expect that he was the one who taught them to print so well). And all those curves, flourishes, and spirographs… you must have had a really really steady hand. If one of his aims truly is to quote Warhol quoting slickly perfect machine-age mass media (and not just the Institute reading too much into his work), then he is doing it pretty damn well.

As for the message, the actual content, in his work… I’m not quite sure what I think of them yet. Clearly something special is there, because otherwise he would just be a master stylist and technician, nothing more. But of the many many obscure street artists who do political, questioning, parodying work on the sides of buildings, is what he is saying really that unique? Yes, there is Andre the Giant, a theme that he has explored from every angle and then some, but underneath the heavy eyebrows, it is a very familiar message: question giving in to media control, watch out for those in control.

Yet clearly there is something special about Andre because of his sheer ubiquity and persistence. The traditional ways of evaluating art are to look at the style, the process, the message contained, and/or the life and times of the artist. Maybe with Shepard Fairey you have to look at something else altogether, like the way he has sought to distribute it or the method by which he tried to engage his audience. Again, stickering and mass-postering are not unheard-of techniques… but if we see these acts of “promotion” as part of his deliberate artmaking process, it sort of becomes clear why Andre the Giant (as a gigantic performance or act, and not as a single print or design) is such a masterpiece to the curators at the ICA.

Yang is falling asleep listening to me type—always a good sign to stop before I drown in the swirly sea that is “rambling about art.” =) But those are my thoughts roughly. Overall I thought the exhibit was well worth seeing, and I would go back again because we were rushed out at closing time. Also, I do want the exhibit catalogue, if there is one. I think keeping some of Fairey’s work on my shelf will keep me motivated and determined to get really, ridiculously good at something.