Street Art Series #1 - OBEY HH (P26)

This is the first in an ongoing series of stamps I'm carving to commemorate famous (or is that infamous?) Street Art campaigns.

It turns out this image was still beyond my carving means and I'm not really satisfied enough with it to make it a permanent installation. Therefore the series will start with a hitchhiker.

Shepard Fairey

"Whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience."
— Thomas C. Halibuton

Artist Shepard Fairey is truly the anti-authoritarian poster child. The international notoriety achieved by his Andre the Giant paper campaign offers us, if nothing else, gloriously ironic proof of the power of advertising. For over a decade, from Tokyo to London to Philadelphia to San Francisco, posters of the deceased, larger-than-life WWF star have proliferated like goofy Orwellian/Constructivist icons, issuing vague threats like BUY, SUBMIT, OBEY.

Buy what? Obey whom? The question answers itself: nothing, and no one. The Giant is an empty signifier, and when a viewer begins to question the meaning behind Fairey's propaganda, they begin to question the meaning behind all the rest.

From http://www.e-underground-art-gallery.com

For more on Shepard Fairey please visit http://www.obeygiant.com

Tags: clue, hitchhiker, Street Art, OBEY, Shepard Fairey, Andre The Giant Has A Posse