Iggy Pop interviewt Shepard „Obey Giant“ Fairey

Iggy Pop interviewt Shepard Fairey und das startet genau so, wie man es von einem Iggy erwarten würde, denn der bezeichnet Shepards bekannteste Arbeit (das Obama-Artwork) erstmal als die größte Scheiße, die er jemals gemacht hat.

IGGY POP: I wanted to start out by talking to you about the biggest mess you’ve created, which is the Barack Obama piece you made in the run-up to the last election. My first thought was that it reminded me a little of something I would have seen in the Middle East—you know, the kind of simple picture of a leader that you see go up when there’s going to be civil unrest or when they die. What were you thinking when you made that image?

SHEPARD FAIREY: I created the Obama image with a little bit of a different intention than a lot of other stuff that I make. It’s not that I haven’t put people who I admire on pedestals before, but they were usually people like the members of Black Sabbath or the Black Panthers. I’ve also made a lot of political art in the past where I was criticizing people like George W. Bush—I worked very hard in 2004 to make anti-Bush imagery. But then Bush got reelected, and so I thought I needed to reevaluate my approach to mainstream politics. At that point, I’d had a kid, a daughter, and as the 2008 election campaign was beginning, I had a second daughter on the way. So I started to think, “This isn’t about me augmenting my existing brand of pissed-off rebellion. This is about my daughters’ future.”

Interview: Shepard Fairey By Iggy Pop, das Bild stammt aus einer Serie von Prints, die Fairey jüngst für eine Ausstellung produzierte (via Bigod)