Fairey et al v. The Associated Press

Filing 235

MEMORANDUM OF LAW in Support re: 234 MOTION in Limine No. 5 to Preclude Obey Clothing from Presenting Shepard Fairey's Expert Witnesses at Trial.. Document filed by The Associated Press. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit A, # 2 Exhibit B - Part 1, # 3 Exhibit B - Part 2, # 4 Exhibit C, # 5 Exhibit D)(Cendali, Dale)

Fairey et al v. The Associated Press

Doc. 235 Att. 2

EXHIBIT B
PART I

TO THE AP'S MOTION IN LIMINE NO. 5 TO PRECLUDE OBEY CLOTHING FROM PRESENTING SHEPARD FAIREY'S EXPERT WITNESSES AT TRIAL

Dockets.Justia.com

The Shepard Fairey Obama HOPE poster as Icon: Report for the legal case Shepard Fairey vs. The Associated Press
Marita Sturken, Ph.D. Professor and Chair Department of Media, Culture, and Communication New York University

(1) I have been asked to offer an opinion on the status of the Shepard Fairey Obama HOPE poster in relation to the history of the image of political figures, the history of the use of photographic images in art, and its iconic status. In the report that follows, I will refer to the image in question (at issue in this law suit) as the "Fairey Obama poster," which had two renditions with the words HOPE and PROGRESS. In this report, I focus on the Fairey HOPE poster. (Figure 1) (2) It is my opinion that the original photographic image was transformed in this poster into an image that has acquired iconic status. By iconic, I mean that the image became famous enough to stand in for several intersecting aspects of American culture and politics in the past two years: President Barack Obama's popularity, the grass roots interest in Obama's 2008 political campaign, popular political figures in general, and political power. Evidence of this iconic status, which I will discuss further in this report, can be found in the fact that it has become the source of a remarkable number of knock-offs, references, and parodies. (3) In their study of iconic photographs, Robert Hariman and John Lucaites state that iconic photographic images are "widely recognized and remembered, are understood to be representations of historically significant events, activate strong emotional identification or response, and are reproduced across a range of media, genres, or topics" (Hariman and Lucaites, 27). In a similar sense, I believe that the Fairey Obama poster has achieved the status of an image icon, one that stands in for a particular political persona, era, and style. (4) It is my opinion that the iconic status of the image can be attributed to its particular combination of a recognizable conventional political pose (one established through a long history of political poses that in American culture begins with George Washington) with a distinct aesthetic and artistic style, a style that is emblematic of contemporary artistic and popular styles and now associated with Shepard Fairey in particular.

A. Method
(5) I am a specialist in the study of visual culture, which includes the study of images across different social arenas including art, advertising, popular culture,

1

politics, journalism, and science. My training and background is interdisciplinary and in the arts and humanities, drawing on the fields of media studies, cultural studies, art, and American studies. While I am versed in social science method and approaches, in particular in communication, my method derives from the humanistic approaches of semiotics and discourse analysis (analyzing images as meaningful texts, how they circulate and are talked about, and how their meanings can change in difference contexts). In semiotics, for instance, the process of reading images focuses on connotations-the cultural and social meanings that are conveyed by a particular combination of elements in a particular context. One might say, for example, that the denotative or literal meaning of an image of a cowboy is simply the image of a man riding a horse. The connotative meaning is much more layered and complex, bringing in the cultural associations that are widely accepted for such an image-the cowboy as rugged individualist, American icon, a symbol of the dying west, masculinity, etc. A key aspect of my methodological approach that is worth noting is that it focuses on the image itself, within the social, cultural, and political contexts in which it generates meaning. In this methodological approach, while understanding the artisUcreator's intentions can be useful in analyzing an image, the broader commonly-shared cultural meaning of the image is the primary focus of analysis. (6) I am co-author of a book, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, with Lisa Cartwright, published by Oxford University Press, that is a very popular teaching book on visual culture, how images make meaning, and the theories and approaches that we have to understand images. This book has become the standard text in many college and university courses that deal with the cultural interpretation of popular images. The Second Edition of this book, published in 2009, includes an analysis of the Fairey Obama poster. I have also published two essays (one co-authored) that address the meaning of the Fairey Obama poster in relation to the changing aesthetics of American patriotism and to new concepts of cultural entrepreneurship (Sturken 2009; Banet-Weiser and Sturken, 2010). While Practices of Looking has a section on copyright in relation to image reproduction, I am not a specialist in copyright. My expertise is focused on the cultural and political meaning of images, rather than their legal status. (7) A copy of my c.v. is attached as Exhibit A. I have had prior experience as an expert witness in two legal cases: Medavoy vs Klein, Allergan et al., 2004, and Klein-Beck vs Allergan, 2006. In both cases, I provided analysis in relation to false advertising claims and the marketing of off-label use of Botox. I wrote reports for each and in the first case, I went through the deposition process. The first case went to trial but the portion of the case in which I was an expert was dismissed. The second case was settled. (8) In preparation for writing this report, I reviewed the complaints and the depositions of Shepard Fairey and Mannie Garcia. I am being compensated for my time spent in connection to this case at a rate of $100 per hour. To date, I have spent approximately 45 hours in preparing this report.
2

B. The Conventional Pose of a Political Leader
(9) It is my opinion that the Fairey Obama poster succeeds as a political image and has gained iconic status through the ways it transformed a conventional image of a political candidate through particular aesthetic styles. The success of the image is derived from its transformation of the recognizable conventions of a political pose (of a politician appearing thoughtful, inspirational, and leader-like) through a set of image techniques that signal a new kind of aesthetic in that tradition. I see the elements of the conventional pose as a three-quarters pose, a view from below, and a gaze toward the horizon. (10) In the Fairey Obama poster, Sarack Obama is in three-quarters pose, looking out seemingly above the crowd and toward an imagined horizon. The pose is a convention that creates the image of a figure who is thoughtful and pensive, tangible and accessible yet above the crowd. Like many generic poses, it can thus be seen as conjuring a set of contradictory meanings-the leader is powerful and formal yet accessible (through the image itself, an effect compounded when the image is a photograph). To the extent that the original Mannie Garcia photograph reproduces this convention, it could be said that its meaning comes hot only from its form (a photograph) but from content (political conventions) that existed prior to the photograph and that has a venerable history behind it. This does not negate the individual skills that photographers might use to create images. The meaning of conventional images, however, is derived from shared understandings of their codes, just as how the meaning of unconventional images derives from how they depart from those codes. (11) The conventions of imaging political leaders in inspiring poses are evidenced in the history of how modern political leaders have been represented in news photographs and political posters, on currency and official portraits, from American presidents to Soviet politicians to political leaders throughout the world to reVOlutionaries such as Che Guevara. These conventions can be seen as largely modern (I use this term in its historical sense, to indicate the social historical context of the last few centuries with its rise of industrial technology, the mass media, and modern nation states), and related to the political iconography of the modern nation state. These poses circulate and are replicated by modern technologies of visual reproduction, such as the photograph. (12) There are many ways in which we can methodologically attempt to understand how such conventions take hold. For instance, one approach might be to draw upon the perspective of neuroscience to understand how particular kinds of poses affect viewers psychologically (Powell and Schirillo). From the methodological perspective of visual culture analysis, conventions are understood as semiotic signs that gain power through repetition. Thus, iconographies are established over time and become commonly understood as signifying particular meanings. This means that particular gazes, postures, and

3

poses are awarded meaning as they become increasingly generic, and are reproduced by photographers (and, as in this case, by people such as politicians) whether consciously or unconsciously. Iconic and conventional poses are thus reproduced by politicians and photojournalists and selected by photo editors with the understanding that they will resonate with viewers. In semiotics, this means that they form a recognizable sign the meaning of which has been built up and affirmed through multiple images. (13) Another way of understanding this is to address how conventions are reproduced not only by image-makers but also by the people represented within the images. Familiar signs are repeated because they create a shorthand meaning to viewers. People who are posing for photographs quite often deliberately assume conventional poses before the camera as a means to convey a particular meaning-whether they do so consciously or not. Iconic images are thus often recreated not only through the choices made by photographers but also through the actions of those posing within the frame. One example of a repeating icon might make this clear. (Figure 2) The Franklin photograph of firefighters who raised a flag at Ground Zero, which became an iconic image of 9/11, is a clear reference (almost a remake) of the famous image by Rosenthal of the flag being raised at Iwo Jima, an image so iconic that it has been subject to an extraordinary number of remakes (Hariman and Lucaites, Chapter 4). I have argued elsewhere that the Franklin photograph remakes the Iwo Jima image in a way that was participated in not only by the photographer who replicated the original images via angle and placement of the figures, and by the photo editors who immediately pulled the picture out from a group because it looked familiar, but also by the firefighters themselves who, consciously or unconsciously, participated in replicating the gesture of raising the flag on a site of violent conflict (Sturken 2007, 189-90). Politicians are particular adept at replicating conventional poses, in particular because they are photographed so much and participate quite regularly in events that are photo opportunities. Like many popular politicians, President Obama is highly skilled in how he presents himself in contexts where he is being photographed. (Figure 3) (14) The Fairey Obama poster replicates this political pose and deploys a set of conventions that have been replicated for decades, if not centuries, in the images of politicians. The modern political photograph draws on the history of political portraiture (as well as the history of portraiture in general) but its status as a photograph is crucial to its meaning. In an essay entitled "Photography and Electoral Appeal," well-known semiotician Roland Barthes wrote that the political photograph offers a particular kind of constructed intimacy for the viewer that transports political discourse from policy to a "socio-moral status." Thus, Barthes argued, the electoral photograph functions like a mirror to the viewer and "offers to the voter his own likeness, but clarified, exalted, superbly elevated into a type" through which the viewer is "invited to elect himself' (Barthes 91). The political photograph is, as Barthes notes, "replete with signs."

4

(15) Thus, within this framework, I would argue that the Garcia photograph is a conventional photograph of a politician. This does not negate from its quality as a photograph. The fact is that it is the work of photojournalists covering politicians to reproduce conventional images that are recognizable to viewers within a tradition of political images. (16) There are several aspects to this political pose, in both its photograph convention and in its longer history in painting, which I will discuss separately. 1. Three-quarters pose: (17) The history of portraiture in Western art demonstrates that the portrait was an important genre of painting, in particular when commissions of the wealthy and aristocratic were a primary means for artists to produce work. The conventions of many portraits until the Renaissance were predominantly in profile, with the subjects depicted on a flattened surface.. (Figure 4) With the development of techniques of visual perspective in the Renaissance in the early fifteenth century, which produced an enormously important shift in the commonly understood visual codes for representing reality and a set of codes for imaging three dimensions, portraiture became less flat and more dimensional. In fifteenth century Dutch painting, there was a shift toward the portraiture of new kinds of individuality, and the three-quarter angle was a key feature of this shift (Janson). (Figures 5-7) The three-quarters pose also emerged in the context of the Italian Renaissance with the work of such artists as Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. (Figures 8-9) By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the three-quarters pose had become a reliable portrait convention, in which a certain openness of the portrait subject was suggested, yet one with a convention of not revealing too much intimacy (as was deemed appropriate for monied and aristocratic subjects). The three-quarters pose signifies a certain power to the person being depicted. They look away from the viewer in a way that does not acknowledge their presence. (18) In the early years of the United States, this iconography took hold quickly in relation to the portraits of presidents, both in terms of official painting portraits and in subsequent photographic images. Two of the most famous versions of this are the Gilbert Stuart painting of President George Washington, which was then replicated on the one dollar bill, (Figures 10 and 11) and the Matthew Brady photograph of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860 (Kismaric; Goldberg, 75). (Figure 12) Stuart's 1796 unfinished portrait of Washington (referred to as the Athenaeum) was then replicated in numerous copies made by Stuart and transposed into engravings that then become part of the dollar bill design. The three-quarters pose is evident across U.S. currency, with James Madison on the twenty-dollar bill and Benjamin Franklin on the one-hundred dollar bill among others. (Figures 13 and 14) (19) When early photographic portraiture began, which it did quite rapidly after the invention of photography in 1839, it incorporated many of the conventions of

5

painting portraiture. Early cameras were cumbersome and demanded that subjects sit still at length, and so the conventions of formal photographic portraiture were quite rigid. Both a steady camera gaze and a three-quarters pose were very popular poses from the beginning. As I have noted, these conventions get repeated for a number of reasons: their iconographies signify a shared set of understandings of the poses, and they are then replicated by artists/photographers and by the subjects of the images themselves. The formality of such portraiture was also aided by the limits of the technologies producing them. (20) The three-quarters gaze demands that the posed figure look off to one side outside of the picture, rather than at the viewer. A review of portraits and photographs of famous politicians and American presidents reveals that while this is not exclusively the singular pose through which they are depicted, it is clearly the dominant mode. (Figures 15-19) Some social research suggests that in the history of the images of American presidents in particular, the threequarters pose has been the most common pose (Mullen, 824). (21) There are a large number of examples of this kind of political pose, in particular in the context of American political iconography. (Figures 20-34) As Figures 20-34 demonstrate, the three-quarters pose, with the head tilted slightly upward and the gaze toward the horizon is a common political pose that is repeated by both politicians and the photographers who document them (and the publications that report on them). While this is by no means the only pose we see of these politicians, its repetition is notable. In semiotic terms, the pose forms a sign that connotes leadership, inspiration, and forward-thinking. Semiotically, we could also say that pose connotes someone who is above the crowd and visionary. (22) Roland Barthes, in analyzing the electoral photograph, defined the threequarters pose as one that connotes inspiration. While the full-face photograph, according to Barthes, "expresses penetration, gravity, frankness: the future deputy is looking squarely at the enemy, the obstacle, the 'problem,'" the threequarters photographic pose suggests "an ideal: the gaze is lost nobly in the future, it does not confront, it soars, and fertilizes some other domain, which is chastely left undefined" (92). (23) Importantly, a three-quarters pose positions the subject as looking away from the camera or viewer. There are many images of political leaders that deploy a direct gaze for effect, including the most widely circulated image of Chinese leader Chairman Mao (of such iconic status that it was subject to Andy Warhol's remaking). (Figure 35) However, direct gaze (as Barthes notes) can be seen as connoting confrontation (within the visual codes of cinema, a direct gaze to the camera is understood as threatening the fictional narrative by breaking through to the viewer). While this has been used with great effect for many political images (including the famous recruiting poster of Uncle Sam pointing a

6

figure at "you") it can result in a potentially negative and confrontational image for many modern politicians. (24) The history of photographic images of American politicians demonstrates that for the past few decades, a trend toward candid, unrehearsed images has been underway, from the Kennedy era onward. Thousands of images are produced of American presidents and other world leaders through a range of media, and viewers are accustomed to seeing them across an array of poses, from formal portraits to orchestrated photographic opportunities to candid and potentially embarrassing off-the-cuff moments. Importantly, the Fairey Obama poster departs from this trend. Instead, it makes a point of referring to the more formalized traditional image of a political leader; it is deliberately situating Obama within the particular political iconography of this pose, rather than within the broader and more accessible political image available to viewers today. 2. View from below: (25) It has long been a convention in photography to use a low angle looking up to create images of powerful people. Thus, photojournalists tend to assume positions that allow them to aim their cameras up toward those subjects who are powerful and many political events are orchestrated to have the press be physically below the politicians on view. Of course, in the history of political rallies, protests, and gatherings, political figures are usually standing above the crowd in order to be seen, and sometimes quite deliberately posed as larger. than life. This view from a lower angle has the effect, depending on the angle, of creating a sense of the physical presence or power of the subject, sometimes to the point of them looming physically within the frame. In some cases, the effect is more subtle, as it is in the Fairey Obama poster, with a slight angle upward. 3. Gaze toward horizon: (26) A gaze out over the crowd and toward an end point off-screen and out of the frame is also typical of many political poses that incorporate the three-quarters gaze. Semiotically speaking, this is often seen as connoting a look toward the future or an inspired state of being. Here again, Barthes is useful: "Almost all three-quarter face photos are ascensional, the face is lifted towards a supernatural light which draws it up and elevates it to the realm of higher humanity; the candidate reaches the Olympus of elevated feelings, where all political contradictions are solved" (92-93). Such a gaze thus effectively creates the meaning of a political figure looking outward toward an imagined horizon, and the horizon is most often understood as connoting the future. The slight upturn of Obama's face in the Fairey Obama poster adds to this effect, in particular when it is paired with words like "hope." (27) While this conventional pose has a long history, as I have noted, with politicians, it is also a convention that has been used to image other political leaders. I would like to note, in particular, that one of the most famous and iconic images of a political leader, is the photograph taken by the Cuban photographer

7

Korda of Che Guevara. (Figure 36) This image, which has had quite an extraordinary "afterlife" as an image of an icon of political struggle and revolutionary politics, gains its power from a combination of elements (Che's beret is a potent sign within it of revolutionary style) the most important of which is Che's gaze off-screen toward an imagined future (Casey). Even very stripped down versions of this image can indicate Che through signally its basic features. (Figure 37) (28) To summarize, the conventional political pose that is in evident in the Fairey Obama poster can be situated within a long tradition of images of politicians and political leaders. The effect of the poster is derived in part from the recognizability of this pose to viewers within a poster format that transforms that pose into a new kind of aesthetic.

c.

Use of Photographic Images in Art

(29) Shepard Fairey's use of a photographic image in his poster can be situated within the history of appropriation and the use of photographs in art. As a technique, appropriation in art is defined as a borrowing of forms, text, images into a new work and transforming them in some way. Importantly, the strategy of appropriation is geared at retaining an aspect of the original thing borrowed in order to create a new meaning. Borrowing photographs into artworks has often had the effect of signaling a connection to the immediacy of media and modern culture, or some sense of the real. Thus, it is often the case that the trace of a photographic image provides meaning when inserted into an art image that a drawing or painting would not. (30) Appropriation has thus been a central strategy deployed by artists in the modern art canon. As I will discuss further, in the context of more recent postmodern art style, referencing and borrowing have become even more central in art making. In the modern tradition, appropriation was seen as an avant-garde means to create layers of meaning and the appropriation of news images into art works as a means to connect art to the world of mass media and politics. Key to this intended meaning is that it means something different to incorporate a photograph into a work of art than it does to redraw it. As I will explain further, I believe that the Fairey Obama poster appropriated the conventional political pose into the poster form, and deployed the graphic sign of a photographic outline to convey political immediacy. (31) The artist whose work forms the most obvious antecedent to Shepard Fairey's work in general is Andy Warhol, who is arguably one of the most influential artists of modern art. Warhol's oeuvre transcended the relationship of art and popular culture in ways that have had a lasting cultural influence and one can see his influence on Fairey's use of media images, his silk-screen techniques (I will discuss this further in the next section), his use of color, and his

8

preference for the multiple copies of the poster format (Livingstone). In Warhol's pop origins, he incorporated brands, logos, and consumer products into his art and then transformed them through visual techniques, collage, and repetition. (32) Warhol began incorporating images from popular culture in his art in the early 1960s, and produced a large number of works in the 1960s that used a bold screen-printing technique to screen color into photographic news images (of car crashes, disasters, and race riots) often in repetitive formats (Figure 38) While Warhol's signature color style colorized these images and he repeated them to create graphic patterns, many of these images were not significantly transformed by his processes into new image forms. (33) Warhol later became famous for his color screen printing of famous people, first as cultural icons (such as Elvis Presley) and then commissioned "vanity" portraits. (Figures-39-41) One of Warhol's most well-known celebrity portraits was of Marilyn Monroe, of whom he produced a number of diptych images shortly after her death in 1962. Using a publicity still of Monroe as his original source, Warhol printed color fields into Monroe's image and then repeated it across the canvas. This serial repetition, which became a signature of his work, was a means to connote the repetitive quality of celebrity as a form of mass production. (34) Warhol's influence can be seen as having a direct impact on how the relationship of popular culture and art are considered. His work deliberately pushed at the boundaries of definitions of art (in such now famous works as his pile of Brillo boxes) just as the work of Dada artists such as Marcel Duchamp had before him. His primary role in helping to reshape modern art is now undisputable and he is considered by most art critics and art historians to have been one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Repetition and redundancy were a key feature of Warhol's portraits of celebrities and appropriations of news images. The poster aesthetic was implied by his large color silk-screens in which repetition of images across the canvas evoked the mechanical reproduction of the image, mass culture, consumerism, and the pleasures of abundance and excess. All of these qualities of his work form an important lineage to the work of Shepard Fairey. (35) Another artist whose work incorporated photographic images in a way that marks a clear antecedent to the Fairey Obama poster is Robert Rauschenberg. In a number of works, some of them quite large, Rauschenberg incorporated news photographs into paintings, often using a typical Abstract Expressionist brushstroke effect to incorporate the images. Notably, Rauschenberg created a series of silkscreen prints about John F. Kennedy (that presage the Fairey Obama poster) in order to convey the meaning of Kennedy as a popular media figure as well as to demonstrate how the news media had penetrated daily lives in the 1960s. In the 1964 Retroactive I, for instance, (Figure 42) Kennedy's image is framed by screened reproductions of news images of the space

9

program. Rauschenberg reproduced and combined these images, overlapping and painting over them, to comment on Kennedy's iconic status as a political figure defined by and through the news media. Importantly, if Rauschenberg had simply drawn these pictures, they would not have had the same meaning or impact that these recomposed images bring to it. His visual techniques transform the images through paint, washes, color, and collage technique. The graphic, newsprint reproduction gives the work a sense of urgency, giving it an overall sense of the rush of information culture and the power of image reproduction to evoke history. (36) There are many other contemporary artists who deploy images from the news media in their work: Barbara Kruger, whose work garnered attention starting in the 1980s, to the point where she did illustrations for the cover of Newsweek and other publications, created a signature style of enlarged news images with bold phases splashed across them on red bands. (Figure 43) These works form a range of techniques to transform the images that they borrow, yet they share a sensibility of engagement with the world of news, politics, and the immediacy of the photograph. (37) This tradition of deploying photographic images in order to signal the real in some way includes a broad range of engagements with appropriation and transformation. Some of these artists transform images by incorporating them into collages, others use color but do not change the image forms dramatically, others break the images down to the point where they are barely recognizable, remaining only as a trace. (38) I contend that the fact that Shepard Fairey used the outline of a photographic image in making his poster of Obama was absolutely crucial to its effect. The poster image gains its power from the political pose translated through the graphic indication, broken down to mere elements, of a photograph. Its very trace signals immediacy, media content, and the real. A drawing would not have had the same effect. It is also crucial in this case that the original photograph has been reduced to two factors: the conventional photographic pose and the graphic trace that signals a photograph. By comparison, many of Warhol and Rauschenberg's images took the photograph whole and transformed it minimally. (39) While these artists form important lineages to the work of Shepard Fairey, and in particular his use of news images in his work, he has built on these legacies and created a signature style of his own. I will discuss the specific Obama HOPE poster and style in more depth in what follows, in which I argue that Fairey's influence has been substantial. I would like to note that he has drawn on the aesthetic and strategic legacies of these artists in a way that translates those aesthetic strategies and modern techniques into new terrain.

10

(40) It is not incidental to Fairey's reputation and influence as an artist that he began as a street artist, creating work that was intended to be in dialogue with the visual urban terrain of the street from advertisements to graffiti to skateboard culture. As is now well known, he began his career by stenciling Obey Giant graphics in urban environments. This interest in the street situates Fairey within the legacy of 1980s art that incorporated the work of street artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, into the art world, yet in Fairey's work it is combined with a savvy contemporary engagement with branding and cultural entrepreneurship. That he integrates art, design, street art, and running a company with a branded line of clothing makes him, to a certain extent, emblematic of the ease in contemporary culture with mix of branding, art, entrepreneurship, and fashion. His work has consistently deployed strategies of borrowing historical styles and Warholesque repetition. He has created a significant number of works that playoff the codes of political posters, often creating posters quickly, producing many versions,.of images and posting weekly versions on his web site for his fan base. For instance, he produced a series of posters of political figures such as Angela Davis, Che Guevara, and Lenin (as well as posters of cultural figures like Sid Vicious, Jimi Hendrix, and Bob Marley) using a mix of historical poster styles. (Figure 44) While the Obama poster put him on the map in an entirely different way, it follows directly from Fairey's particular aesthetic style of mixing style, postering, and bold graphic design.

D. Shepard Fairey's Transformation of the Garcia Photograph
(41) As the court documents indicate, the Fairey Obama poster has had a rather extraordinary trajectory into the public domain since it was first created, not only as a poster that came to symbolize the Barack Obama campaign and what made it different from other political campaigns, but also as a poster that has come to symbolize political images in general and created a new kind of aesthetic for American patriotism. (42) The conventional political pose struck by Obama in the original Garcia photograph is transformed in the Fairey poster through several visual effects, primarily among them are texture/pattern, color, and the use of text ("HOPE"). The image is extended and amplified by the screen-printing technique into a series of shapes and textures. This can be broken down into the effects of lines, shape and color: 1. Striated lines: (43) The striated lines that shape the contours of Obama's face evoke the texture of newsprint and a long tradition of graphic posters that were produced with traditional printing presses. This simple effect of the striated lines thus evokes the long history of political posters, from Soviet political posters to other forms of cheaply-produced posters for political causes around the world. In particular, this effect deploys the visual style of graphic poster design used by the Bolshevik

11

agitprop artists of the 1920s (in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution), giving the work a sense of political urgency. This style at one level indicates a reference to this particular art tradition of leftist politics, and at a more general level evokes a political immediacy and message. 2. Shape: (44) In the poster, Obama's face, neck, and clothing are transformed into shapes in a way that evokes traditional silkscreen printing. This has what can be seen as a kind of topographical effect, in which the contours are transformed into different color fields. Here again, a longer tradition of political art is evoked, as well as the modern art style of screening color into black-and-white images. As I have noted, the artist who made this kind of style most famous was Andy Warhol. This photo-silkscreen technique has the effect of reducing the image (in this case, the shape of Obama's face) to an elemental yet recognizable set of outlines. This technique has been deployed by artists from Warhol onwards as a means to conjure the meaning of popular printing, the power of image reproduction and repetition, and the power of celebrity. Thus, for instance, when Che Guevara's image is stripped down by photographic techniques to the elemental shape of his face (much as Fairey did in abstracting the contours of Obama's likeness from the original photograph), the reworked image can be understood as evoking the power of his celebrity as well as the celebrity status of the image itself, because viewers can read the original photograph through the mere shapes. 3. Color: (45) The color of the poster is a key feature in its meaning and its iconic status. The color is both evocative of traditional patriotic colors (red, white, and blue) and a playoff those colors. The red is slightly more orange than a typical patriotic orange, the blue is lighter and more gray in tone, and the white is a kind of yellow off-white. Fairey has made this color palette a signature of his style (the off-white tone is predominant in many of his works), and used it in a number of images since the Obama poster. See, for instance, his subsequent poster about wind power (Figure 45) It is also a key feature of the many knock-offs and parodies of the Fairey Obama poster. (46) The crucial feature of this off-color palette is that it references rather replicates the traditional red, white, and blue colors of the American flag and other objects of U.S. patriotism. Thus, viewers of the Fairey Obama poster can recognize that the colors play with the traditional palette. This potentially has the effect of evoking a certain ambivalence toward traditional and conventional forms of American patriotism, and in the case of the Obama campaign poster, had the effect of signaling something different about this particular political candidate. 4. Text: (47) The Fairey Obama poster combines image and text-a simple aspect of its status as a political poster that is very important not only to its transformative

12

status but to its political message. The interaction of text and image has a long history, and analyses of images (from advertisements to political posters) have demonstrated the complex interaction of signs that text and image create. The words direct the viewer to read certain qualities and meanings into the image. Font, letter size, color, and typographic feel all contribute to the meaning of text in particular when combined with images. (48) The words "HOPE" are boldly presented on the poster in size, font (a sansserif, straightforward, modern style) and color. Obviously, the blue color of the HOPE text connects it to the overall color palette of the poster. The size is emphatic, and the fact that the capital letters are situated squarely at the bottom of the frame draws again on the visual legacies of Soviet and leftist poster techniques. There are many ways in which political posters can use text, and a softer, less emphatic use of text is increasingly the norm (certainly much thinner type fonts are more common). (49) Finally, the word "hope" directs the meaning of the image in crucial ways. Viewers are invited to create an equation and correlation between the image of Obama's face and his gaze off screen and the concept of Hope. As the many parodies of this image demonstrate, other words can easily transform the picture into other meanings (this is one the central tenets of semiotics, that images and words can be directed in particular contexts to create new signs). I believe that this poster did succeed quite well in creating a sense of hope for the many viewers who circulated it and embraced it during the campaign. .

E. Fairey's Use of Pastiche and Postmodern Style
(50) There are several important aspects of the aesthetic style that Fairey uses to transform the photographic image into a political poster image and to reconfigure the conventional political pose. These aspects of style can be situated within a broader context of contemporary styles of art and popular culture. This is often referred to as postmodern style (distinguishing it from the conventions of modernism and avant-garde modern art), which is characterized by a selfconscious kind of meta-communication, referencing/quoting, pastiche (borrowing and mixing different styles from history), and an integration of art with popular culture. Much postmodern art is defined by its derivative and appropriative quality, one that involves playing off the codes of previous art styles and previous works of art. Postmodern style is thus defined in part as a style that is always pointing to previous styles of imaging. (51) Most pertinent to an interpretation of the Fairey Obama poster is the way it creates meaning through referencing. As I have discussed, the poster refers to Soviet agit-prop art styles, the newsprint of political posters in general, the Warholesque silkscreen effect of evoking popular culture and celebrity, and the traditional color scheme of American patriotic images and objects, in particular

13

the U.S. flag. For such an image, the reference to other images, styles, and objects is its primary message, rather than a simple and direct set of meanings. This has the effect of creating layered meanings and demanding relatively complex readings from viewers. (52) Fairey's Obama poster, and much of his poster work in general, is clearly situated in the context of remix culture that proliferates today via the Internet, digital media, Youtube culture, hip-hop music forms, and a whole array of cultural engagements that remake, remix, mash-up, parody, and borrow other cultural forms and references. While much of this culture is generated in the context of the emergence of digital media, as I have noted, appropriation has a very long history in art, not only as a key feature of postmodern art (which arguably begins in the 1980s but could date back to the 1920s) but also modern art. (53) One of the key features of the pastiche-postmodern style of referencing and quoting is that it defines a particular kind of viewer, a knowing one who is accustomed to reading images as references and citations and who recognizes the different styles of media and popular culture. While the Fairey Obama poster deploys the cliches of celebrity and political affirmation in its image of a leader looking off toward an imagined horizon, it effectively recodes its political image in a way that addresses viewers adept at reading references as a key feature of style. In other words, it addresses a viewer who can recognize that these are the conventions of the typical political pose (in the same way that a viewer of The Daily Show recognizes the codes of television news that are the object of its parodies). Every element of the Fairey Obama poster signals a reference through its style-the use of off-key colors to signal the flag, the screen printing style (not inherent to the production of the image but added as effect) to evoke early modern printing styles of political posters, the Warholesque screening of color into black and white forms. These all address a viewer who can read the image as one that plays with image conventions rather than replicating them. Thus, in my opinion, the image plays with the idea of a political poster at the same time that it presents an inspiring image of this particular politician. This kind of dual position, playing with the style while simultaneously asserting a direct message through it, is a feature of postmodern style. In other words, the poster signals to the viewer the codes of the political poster, but still advocates for its candidate. (Figure 46) (54) That not all viewers would read the references in the poster to the full extent does not mean that they have any less power. Today viewers (many of whom grew up watching Sesame Street episodes, Pixar animated films, and The Simpsons, all of which deploy referencing as a style) recognize the knowing position of an image text that references other sources and styles, even if they might be unaware of the actual original source. In other words, viewers (even very young ones) are accustomed today to recognizing that references are being made even if they are unfamiliar with exactly what is being referenced.

14

(55) This postmodern style of referencing proliferates in popular culture, but has, until quite recently, been largely absent in conventional political culture. While parodies of politicians and their style might proliferate on The Daily Show, and other political shows, most political posters and campaign imagery have remained strictly conventional. Indeed most American patriotic imagery can easily be characterized as kitsch-evoking simplistic modes of sentiment and unironic demonstrations of political affiliation. (56) On one hand, the poster is clearly an effective affirmation of the thencandidate and his message of hope and change. On the other hand, its aesthetic of referencing and image play also creates an ironic subtext. It is safe to say that the style of irony has had little to no history in official American patriotic culture (Sturken 2009). The history of patriotic, nation-affirming images in the United States have been decidedly un-ironic embraces of U.S. exceptionalism, power, and deployments of a mythic culture of American innocence. (57) The transformative nature of the Fairey Obama poster can thus be seen as deploying the style of appropriative, reference-laden culture to a mode of political representation in ways that were largely unprecedented. As I have written elsewhere; the popularity of the Fairey Obama poster has been quite extraordinary for many reasons, primary among them because its contemporary pastiche aesthetic resonated with a broad swath of the American public (many of them younger citizens) that had never felt addressed by the aesthetic of typical patriotic images and political posters. In my opinion, this image is a harbinger of a shift in the aesthetic of American patriotism, a shift from traditional and conventional patriotic images (many kitsch, all un-ironic) to images that engage in play and irony (Sturken 2009). Thus, the fact that a fine art version of the poster is now on display in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, where it sits among conventional presidential portraits of political leaders, signals an aesthetic shift in the codes of patriotism. It remains to be seen whether this will be a temporary shift or more permanent one. The image speaks to younger generations of viewers/citizens for whom such an appropriative aesthetic is the norm, and that it is likely to signal the potential for ironic, playful images to coexist within the image culture of U.S. politics and patriotic culture along with more conventional images. (58) In this sense, the Fairey Obama poster had an impact that cannot be underestimated. Fairey's accomplishment in creating a poster that transfers an aesthetic of popular youth culture to the realm of political patriotism and the traditional political pose was unprecedented. It happened to resonate for viewers because its timing was right for viewers, politically, culturally, technologically, etc. Such a response and resonance is difficult to predict beforehand because the factors that go into it are so multiple and complex.

15

F. Parodies, Knock-Offs, and References as Evidence of the Fairey Obama Poster's Iconic Status
(59) Of all of Fairey's work, the Obama poster has had the most influence, visibility, and cultural circulation. The poster has been phenomenally popular, spawning not only many imitators but also a significant number of secondgeneration references. It is clear to me that it is the poster, not the original photograph, that has engendered and encouraged this cultural response and production. In signaling the original Fairey Obama poster, most of these knockoffs are deploying a second level of meaning that connects to its status as a political image and as a political poster. Most of the knock-offs use the color of the original, its silk-screen print effect, the three-quarter pose, or some combination of the three elements to signal it. (60) The first references to the original HOPE poster were made by Shepard Fairey himself, as he produced several additional posters of Obama including a Vote poster for the campaign (Figure 47) and an inauguration poster that posted the new president, in a new pose, within a triangular frame. (Figure 48) He also produced a Time Magazine person of the year cover (Figure 49) and a Rolling Stone Magazine cover (Figure 50), both of which used different images of the president. In the Time cover, Obama retains the political pose, looking off to an imagined horizon on his right, and is imaged in the same color scheme but . against a textured background of symbols. In the Rolling Stone cover the color palette is referenced rather than directly replicated, and laid over the presidential seal. It is a more circumspect image, more potentially cautious in its representation of Obama-a fact underscored by its text "bold action or compromise?" (61) As I have noted, the original HOPE poster has inspired an extraordinary number of references and remakes. I have looked at a large number of these images, and I think it most useful to place them into several different categories. These categories are as follows: (1) Obama as an inspirational political leader; (2) negative and critical images of Obama that rework the connotation of the image from one of hope to one of untrustworthiness; (3) political leaders in general; (4) charged images of people whose lives have changed those of others; and (5) political poster images in general (62) 1. The original HOPE poster has produced a significant number of knock-off images and objects (in the form of T-shirts, ties, and other curios) as well as remakes that are inspired to reference the original in homage. These knock-offs aim to capitalize on replicating the original poster for consumer purposes. Others just use it humorously. (Figures 51-55) (63) 2. Parodies of the Obama poster have proliferated in circuits that are in opposition to the President and his policies. These usually deploy the essential elements of the original poster (color palette, screen printing effect, position of

16

text) with new text and other elements in order to rework the positive meaning of the original image into one of critique. (Figures 56-58) (64) 3. Images of political leaders in general, from Sarah Palin to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in ways that take the iconography of the Fairey image and apply it as a means to signal political potency. In these images, the use of Fairey's signature color palette is used to reference the power of the original poster. (Figures 59-60) (65) 4. Charged images of people whose lives have impacted those of others. For instance, during the 2009 upheavals protesting the Iranian election, images of the young woman Neda Agha-Soltan, whose on-camera death created a martyr and icon of the struggle, were remade in the style of Fairey's poster and circulated on the Web. Many used a green palette, which had become associated with the Iranian resistance movement, within the textured screen print effect of the Fairey poster. (Figures 61-62) (66) Evidence that the Fairey poster has at this point come to stand in for all political posters of impact can be seen in the recent parodies by political comedians, including Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in their planned October 2010 rally on the mall to "restore sanity." For instance, the Stephen Colbert parody deliberately remakes the Fairey Obama poster while turning its color palette into something more jarring and electric in order to convey Colbert's political personality. The reference to the Fairey Obama poster thus provides a shorthand for Colbert's joke, allowing him to signal his character's association with political power. With their signature knowing style, Steward and Colbert create a layered meaning in these references-they refer in humor not only to the original poster but in essence also to its iconic status and inevitability as a reference. (Figures 63-65) (67) In the history of image icons, this kind of riffing, referencing, and remaking has a long tradition, as the history of the Che image makes clear. Often this process of reducing the image of a few recognizable elements is a key factor (for Che, the gaze and beret, for the Fairey Obama poster, the color and silkscreen effect). Iconic images are not easily created, and almost never by design. They emerge from complex sets of social, cultural, and political factors that can change over time. I cannot define all of the social and historical reasons why the Fairey Obama poster became an icon at this particular historical moment, but I am confident in stating that its iconic status in the history of American political iconography is assured.

G. Summary
(68) It is my opinion that the original photographic image taken by Mannie Garcia was transformed in this poster into an image that has acquired iconic status.

17

While the original photograph was conventional and generic, the Fairey poster transformed it into something significantly unique, original, and culturally significant. The power of the image is derived from its combination of a conventional political pose (with a three-quarters pose, a gaze toward the horizon, and a low angle) and a visual aesthetic that exemplifies contemporary visual culture. (69) Perhaps most importantly, I feel that this poster has had a potentially lasting impact on the aesthetics of American patriotism-opening up a door toward styles of pastiche, referencing, and irony, none of which have been present in American patriotic culture before these recent years. (70) This poster did create hope. The fact that this hope could not be sustained, by one individual no matter how powerful, in the current morass of American politics, may be one reason why its meaning has been so easily hijacked and redeployed in ways that counter its original intent. Yet, as such, it has formed a vital component in American public culture at this moment in history.

Marita Sturken, Ph.D. October 1, 2010 Works Cited: Banet-Weiser, Sarah, and Marita Sturken. "The Politics of Commerce: Shepard Fairey and the New Cultural Entrepreneurship." In Blowing Up the Brand, edited by Melissa Aronczyk and Devon Powers. New York: Peter Lang, 2010, 263-83. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, [1957] 1972. Casey, Michael. Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image. New York: Vintage, 2009. Goldberg, Vicki. The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives, Expanded and Updated Edition. New York: Abbeville, 1993.

18

Hariman, Robert, and John Louis Lucaites. No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Janson, H.W. and D.J. Janson. History of Art. New York: Abrams [1962] ADD most recent edition Kennedy, Randy. "Obama's Face (That's Him?) Rules the Web," New York Times, May 30,2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/arts/design/31pain.html?_r= 1. Kismaric, Susan. American Politicians: Photographs from 1843 to 1993. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1994. Livingstone, Marco. "Do It Yourself: Notes on Warhol's Techniques." In Kynaston McShine, ed. Andy Warhol: A Retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989,63-78. McShine, Kynaston, ed. Andy Warhol: A Retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989. Mullen, Lawrence J. "The President's Visual Image from 1945 to 1974: An Analysis of Spatial Configuration in News Magazine Photographs." Presidential Studies Quarterly 27.4 (Fall 1997), 819-34. Nyong'o, Tavia. "Art." Social Text 100. 27.3 (Fall 2009),53-57. Powell, W.R. and J.S. Schirillo. "Asymmetrical Facial Expressions in Portraits and Hemispheric Laterality: A Literature Review." Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition 14.6 (February 2009),545-72. Sturken, Marita. Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Sturken, Marita. "The New Aesthetics of Patriotism," Journal of Visual Culture 8.2 (Fall 2009), 168-72. Wagner, Anne M. "Warhol Paints History, or Race in America." Representations 55 (Summer 1996),98-119.

19