Obey/Giant
By Jeff Roberts
Just about anything that has been produced by a human being can be
described as art. Whether a particular piece of art is something worth
looking at (or listening to, or "consuming" in general)
is a question that only society answers. It's hard to say what people
say is art and what they say isn't. Basically, a society tends to
judge art on the way it affects how people think and feel. This is
the case with the fine arts and the low arts, whether judged by the
artistic elite or by popular culture.
There are different categories of media for art: visual (painting,
photography, sculpture), audio (music), audio-visual (film, television),
and others. Now there is the internet, which provides an interesting
new type of medium-the type that can play in information. One of the
general characteristics of any kind of art is that it stimulates the
brain. So when one has the ability to create and distribute information
on a very large scale, one has the potential to create things which
affect how people think quite easily. This kind of art uses society
as its canvas.
However, making this kind of art does not necessarily depend on the
internet. The "street artist" Shepard Fairey began to create
art out of information over ten years ago. As an art student around
1990, he started working on an interesting project; while other artists
create paintings, photographs, sculptures or music, Fairey decided
to create a phenomenon. He produced an image with a picture of WWF
personality Andre the Giant on it, reading "Andre the Giant has
a Posse" (this actually wasn't quite his creation; he got it
out of a magazine). He would have people photocopy the image onto
stickers and post them along the street on buildings, utility poles,
dumpsters, anywhere they were visible. He wrote a manifesto, describing
this project as "an experiment in Phenomenology." The idea
was to create the ubiquitous side-effects of a phenomenon without
anything serious behind it, thus making people wonder about the purpose
of this mysterious campaign and react to it with amusement, suspicion,
or simple recognition and familiarity. Fairey was largely successful,
as Giant Posse images can now be found all over urban areas, New York
City in particular. The image itself has changed a bit over the years,
mostly because the WWF asked him to stop using their materials-the
phenomenon is now referred to simply as "Giant", and the
image is a more abstract representation of the wrestler's face. Furthermore,
many of the images are now accompanied by the word "Obey".
Much of his material is now distributed over the web, along with the
expected "Obey/Giant" merchandise.
One of the interesting tidbits on the Obey/Giant web site is that
it explains some of the issues Fairey, as a pioneer in this type of
art, has to deal with. One of these is the fine line between "street
art" and vandalism. On his website he warns people not to use
stickers in damaging or inappropriate ways, for fear of being labeled
as a vandal. Many organizations are seeking to stop the activity of
public street artists, many of whom have subversive or counter-culture
messages. So Fairey insists that this is not the case, and writes
in defense, "Giant is designed to provoke thought about the mechanics
of the system we live in...not to destroy it." What this shows
is a couple of things. First, it shows that even avant-garde artists,
operating outside the norms of society, still have to be concerned
about practical matters such as the law and political support. While
Fairey works outside the norms of society, his work is inseparably
tied to them. Second, it shows the interesting difficulties an artist
faces when he loses control of his creation. Fairey has his own personal
statement he wants to make, but he depends on other people's help
in making his creation work, since it depends on people both to distribute
it and to view it. So how much is it his own work, and how much is
it the work of an entire society?
The thing that's most striking to me about the web site is that it
explains everything. For the thing that is most interesting about
Obey/Giant is that the point it makes is so elusive. The "art"
is in how people start to think about ubiquitous imagery in different
ways-as a joke, as a threat, as a symbol. Now that I've read everything
on the web site, I can only think of it as an individual artistic
creation by an artist. In a sense, by being part of the "Posse",
I can no longer appreciate the art as a viewer. Or perhaps people
who are in the know can enjoy the art by watching other people's reaction.
I actually walked by a large Obey/Giant poster while walking with
some friends, and I listened to them wonder about it aloud for a while
before explaining what was behind it. In a way, by being in on it,
I feel almost like I am a creator, or at least a discoverer. That
is probably what is most interesting about this type of art-as mentioned
before, this kind of art may be owned by society as much as it was
owned by the creator. In terms of the idea of intellectual property,
it's like a public donation. Fairey himself, on his page, expresses
a deep interest in public murals. Now, by distributing images, sounds
or information over the internet, we have a huge public mural which
anyone can look at and anyone can add to. Can anyone distribute anything
they want over the internet and call it art? Sure. Again, it all comes
down to the question of whether society thinks it's worth looking
at.