Art isn’t that easy, we just make it look that way. This week I attended the Shepard Fairey art exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In case you haven’t seen Fairey’s Andre the Giant stickers plastered on street poles, newspaper boxes and bathroom stalls, maybe you recognize his work from the controversial Barack Obama HOPE posters. But the best part of his artwork is that the visuals enhance the repetition of one word. A word that defines our generation and the circumstances surrounding current events and social factors. That word is “Obey.”
Fairey’s use of one single word is good writing, like good art, in the way that it only appears to be simple. It is within the complexity of his layered craft that creates a higher awareness of the word. With Fairey’s retrospective, from professors to punks and from non-traditional stylized Ivy Leaguers to nerds, everyone was connecting to the varying emotional energies that brought on pride, fear, anger and silly, out-loud laughter. However, the word, obey, was always the same, loud and in your face to remind you not to just appreciate but to get out and do something.
Subtle words also peeked out from under the graffiti layer. The torn newspaper announced its presence. Under the majority of Fairey’s layered pieces was the foundation of smaller words, these newspaper collages from varying countries, each spoke out beyond the graffiti layer, which enhanced their initial meaning. For example, in his red-white-and-blue Barack Obama HOPE poster, words like “special,” “values” and “stay up” appear, but “Hope” boldly stands center stage in blue, while the word “obey” is small and in subdued colors, between Obama’s eyes.
As my friend, Nicole, and I made our way through the multi-roomed exhibit, people did take the art one extra step. Other than noticing the magnetic inspiration of the artwork, the final layer, which was the stylized touch in the corner, “Obey,” and the newspaper clipping theme, we overheard these people from a myriad of backgrounds, not just dialoguing, but critiquing his work. In a “yeah, I can do that” way, people agreed they could have done a better job. Nicole and I admitted to each other later that we haven’t ever experienced that blatant attitude in any gallery. We decided that the subversion of Fairey’s magnificent piece of multifaceted, multilayered artwork baring the simple word, Obey, had created the new behavior. As we went to the coat check, there were even people unconsciously avoiding standing between the roped-off area. One woman snuck around the line, standing inside the ropes pointing out the irony of subversion. She said, “I wonder if you are being subversive for creating a new line, or I am being subversive by standing between the ropes as a reaction to your line.”
After the woman’s words at the exhibit, I couldn’t help but think of what Fairey’s work meant for writers. There are ways art affects a person that go beyond words in a way that will forever hold back the popularity of writing to images. For this reason, unlike visuals, which are an immediate mental process followed by a mental interpretation and a verbalized response, words are filtered by assumptions, prejudices, definitions, connotations, objective and subjective meanings, and the literal and figurative sense of the word before the it can be interpreted and a reaction can finally be made. It may be impossible to feed the mind of a reader as much as the strength created in just the use of one perfect word in Fairey’s images.
Then, it hits me. It is possible that repetition may be the answer. Fairey’s work had a format which lent itself to a cohesiveness that was comfortable to the eyes. Because of its adherence to his specific form, it had the appearance of simplicity, which allowed people to unconsciously, but actively, participate.
In writing, the powers of more popular forms of poetry do make an impact on audiences with repetition. Slam poetry seems to be the best example of this through the poem’s fast-paced reiteration of word phrases. And while other methods of this duplication occur, in the train track ca-chunk of Ginsberg, the sermon-esque circles of Emerson, or the catchy rhythmic and rhyming meters of Shakespeare’s sonnets, they don’t necessarily speak to our generation as much as they have spoken to their own. Either way, it is the commonality of sound that keeps the writing audience returning hungry for more. So then, is it possible for a writer to create a HOPE poster of words that have the same impact on a reading audience? That writer is out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered, waiting to simplify and perfect our generation’s voice, waiting to tell us to “Obey.”
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