"Fairey has said that the real message behind his work is “Question everything.” I question the I.C.A. director Jill Medvedow’s claim, in the show’s catalogue, that Fairey pursues a “quest to challenge the status quo and disrupt our sense of complacency through his art.” What isn’t status quo about political rage? And have you met anyone not heavily medicated who strikes you as complacent lately? The retrospective is dated on arrival."
— Peter Schjedahl delivers a terse take-down of Shepherd Fairey’s work (the man, as if it needed to be said, behind the iconic Obama ‘HOPE’ poster). I appreciate the thesis that if it weren’t for the faux-agitprop formlessness of Fairey’s style, that poster couldn’t have - like the candidate - meant so many things to so many people.
