Obey

Category
Additional Images
Sub Categories
Image Description

Black cotton with grey silkscreened artwork.

Back Style
The Shape
The Size
Year / Decade Made
The Manufacturer
Additional Information

Artist and designer Shepard Fairey’s “Obey” campaign is an experiment in phenomenology featuring the image of wrestler Andre the Giant. Fairey has described his “Obey” designs as having no inherent meaning and that they are intended to “stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the sticker [image] and their relationship with their surroundings.” The “Obey" campaign began in 1989 in Providence, RI with the sticker, “Andre the Giant Has a Posse,” and can now be found worldwide as street art, clothing, prints, buttons, and other collectibles.

Fairey would later go on to make the iconic "Hope" poster of Barack Obama in 2008.

Sources

Annobil, K. (2008, January 21). Shepard Fairey. Retrieved July 22, 2020, from http://formatmag.com/features/shepard-fairey/

Fairey, Shepard. (1990). Manifesto. Retrieved from http://www.obeygiant.com/about

Fairey, S. (2008). Barack Obama "Hope" Poster [Painting found in Architecture and Design, Art Institute Chicago, Chicago, IL]. Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://www.artic.edu/artworks/229396/barack-obama-hope-poster

Catalog ID AR0181