Friday, August 29, 2008

Obey! Consume!


Angela Richardson took this shot of a couple of small stencils outside of the Infoshop on Williamson St. about three years ago. I haven't seen many of the "Obey" stencils lately, so that time line makes sense.

Begun back in the long dark past of 1986, the "Andre the Giant Has A Posse" street art campaign as since evolved into what you see above. It's an interesting study in how underground messages spread, and it's definitely worth clicking that link to read more about. Andre's mug, in the form of the "Obey Giant", can be found all around the world even to this day. That's one long-lasting stencil/sticker campaign.

Worth noting, too, is the jolly little Santa Claus urging us all to "Consume", which I think is a nice accompaniment for the Obey stencil. Certainly "obey" and "consume" are two directives we all get behind every day, right?

2 comments:

David said...

More recently Shepard Fairey made some Obama posters. Haven't seen those in a "street art" context in Madison, though they show up in windows, on car stickers, etc.

Emily said...

David - Yep, I just heard a story about that on NPR this morning. Fairey is apparently a bit (rightfully, I'd say) miffed that certain people are personally profiting off his Obama poster design. He'd been donating profits from his own sales to the campaign and putting the rest into new posters, but others have pretty much stolen the design for their own ends. Which is lame, but I applaud him for not getting crazy litigious about it.

I've seen these posters around a lot, too, and one or two smaller versions pasted up that could technically be called street art.

My favorite parody of it, by far, is this one of McCain.