Looking Questions
2. Where does Fairey repeat the shape of the O in HOPE? What does that symbol mean?
3. What emotions do you feel when you look at this image? How does Fairey conjure those feelings?
About This Artwork
Barack Obama's historic presidential campaign culminated in the election of the nation's first African American president. Shepard Fairey's poster, titled HOPE, became an iconic image of the 2008 campaign. Wildly popular and effective as a simple, direct campaign tool, Fairey's portrait provides a controversial example of the role of graphic arts in political movements.
HOPE became a point of controversy because Fairey based his poster on a copyrighted Associated Press (AP) photograph that he did not have permission to use. The original image captured Obama with his head tilted upward and with a serious, thoughtful expression. Fairey altered the photograph to make his print: he zoomed in so that Obama's head and shoulders fill the image from top to bottom; he limited the colors to a patriotic palette of red, off-white, and two shades of blue; and he extended the dark blue of the suit in the lower third of the picture to provide a background for the word "HOPE." These alterations give the qualities of the photograph—particularly Obama's candid expression and skyward gaze—special emphasis, enlisting them to promote the key themes of the campaign: foresight and change. Moreover, Fairey's choice of colors asserts Obama's patriotism—often called into question by his opponents. Fairey's signature color-blocking technique, which resembles graffiti made with a stencil, appealed to the young voters the Obama campaign actively courted.
When Fairey's use of the photograph was discovered, the AP accused him of violating copyright law. Fairey leveled a counter-claim, arguing that his print was protected under the "fair use" clause because he had reworked the photograph for artistic purposes. The case was eventually settled out of court when Fairey agreed to share profits from the print, avoid using AP images without permission in the future, and collaborate on new projects with AP.
This controversy, and the questions about copyright law it raised, brought wide attention to the contemporary street art movement with which Fairey identifies. The print's modern sensibility and Fairey's use of guerilla-style tactics—installing his posters in public places without permission—make it part of this contemporary movement. Even so, HOPE is especially powerful because it draws on artistic principles often used in the civil rights struggle. Artists working for or in organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the black arts group AfriCOBRA, and the feminist group Guerilla Girls have long created bold, striking designs in posters, pamphlets, and placards to send political messages. What was new about Fairey's work was its dissemination over the Internet. As Fairey explained, he hoped his Obama images would "go viral" and reach as many people as possible. In this aim he was wildly successful. In addition to the three hundred thousand HOPE posters Fairey produced and distributed, millions more circulated on the Internet and were printed by fans. Consequently, Fairey's poster not only connects civil rights traditions and guerrilla art but also adapts them to the digital age.
About This Artist
Shepard Fairey is an artist, graphic designer, and illustrator who gained fame with his popular Hope poster, which depicted Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. Fairey graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992 with a degree in illustration. Though he founded a printing business specializing in silkscreen designs, Fairey was, until the Obama campaign, best known as a street artist and guerilla marketer. As a street artist, Fairey posted stickers with images and slogans that encouraged people to question authority. Street artists like Fairey are often controversial, not only because they post art in public places without permission, but also because their works send provocative messages. Fairey captioned his first Obama poster, which he made independently of the Obama campaign, “Progress.” The campaign, upon witnessing the popularity of the poster, asked for three officially-sanctioned images in a similar style. The first and most famous was labeled “Hope.” The others were captioned “Change” and “Vote.”
Warren Perry (photographer), Shepard Fairey. Courtesy of Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery
Related Material
Excitement about the campaign and 2008 election of President Barack Obama spread across the United States and around the world. American artist Van Taylor Monroe painted these Nike sneakers (bottom) with portraits of then-candidate Obama and his slogans. Across the globe, in Tanzania, another artist made this kanga cloth to celebrate Obama’s election. "Hongera" translates as "Congratulations."
Hongera Barack Obama: Upendo Na Amani Ametujalia Mungu, 2008. Kanga cloth made in Tanzania. National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Lucy Y. Steinitz
Van Taylor Monroe III, Obama Sneakers (Nike Air), 2008. National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Van Taylor Monroe III
Barack Obama was not the first black American to mount a campaign for the presidency. In 1972 Shirley Chisholm, a congresswoman from Brooklyn, New York, ran for president as the nation’s first African American candidate from a major party. She won 152 delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Miami, Florida, before withdrawing from the race. Like Fairey’s poster for the Obama campaign, Chisholm’s campaign materials combined art and politics to motivate supporters. During her tenure in the U.S. Congress, where she was the first African American woman elected, Chisholm advanced the ideals of the civil rights struggle by promoting legislation on health and child care and by advocating inner-city and feminist causes.
Unidentified artist, Shirley Chisholm and Martin Luther King Jr., about 1975. Silkscreen poster, 23 1/4 x 15 15/16 in. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.93.26
Shirley Chisholm pin, about 1970s. National Museum of African American History and Culture
When Shepard Fairey used the themes "hope," "progress," and "vote" in his campaign posters, he drew on the political and artistic traditions of the Civil Rights movement. Loïs Mailou Jones’s 1988 watercolor, We Shall Overcome, is an earlier example of uplifting civil rights subjects. An homage to black political leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Jesse Jackson and to artists and athletes like musician Michael Jackson and Olympic figure skater Debi Thomas, the painting affirms civil rights progress.
Loïs Mailou Jones, We Shall Overcome, 1988. Watercolor on paper, 23 1/2 x 17 3/4 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 2006.24.8
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