Art turns ugly in squabble over 'Hope'

original article is here

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, February 13, 2009

(02-12) 18:45 PST --

Artist Shepard Fairey says that he has distributed more than 300,000 copies of his iconic poster of President Obama with the word "Hope" written underneath and that it has inspired countless other versions. Now, the 38-year-old Los Angeles street artist, who says he used an Associated Press photograph as a "visual reference" for his piece, is in the middle of a copyright battle that goes to the heart of how media is made, remixed and mashed up.

Given the notoriety of Fairey's iconic poster, "it is kind of the perfect storm," said Michael Kwun, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco digital advocacy organization. "It raises questions about what we as a culture and a legal society feel is proper."

Shepard Fairey Arrested In Boston

JAY LINDSAY | February 7, 2009 08:30 PM EST |

BOSTON — A street artist famous for his red, white and blue "Hope" posters of President Obama has been arrested on warrants accusing him of tagging property with graffiti, police said Saturday.

Shepard Fairey was arrested Friday night on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art for a kickoff event for his first solo exhibition, called "Supply and Demand."

• Ed Pilkington in New York
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 February 2009 17.49 GMT

For a street artist whose work is scrupulously shrouded in anonymity to evade detection by the NYPD, Poster Boy's comeuppance resulted from a puzzlingly sloppy lowering of his guard.

The anti-consumerist guerrilla artist, dubbed New York's Banksy, was picked up by plain clothed officers on Saturday at an art show in the SoHo area of
Manhattan, his presence at the event having been openly proclaimed on a fly leaflet.

AP alleges copyright infringement of Obama image

Feb 4 06:56 PM US/Eastern By HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: A pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.

Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.

Original blog post can be found at Images to Live By

You could be forgiven for thinking that the Australian state of Victoria just can’t make up its mind as to what it thinks about graffiti and street art. On the one hand, it uses images of graffiti and street art to promote tourism, showing images of Melbourne’s laneways (well, Hosier Lane, usually) on television and in its information guides (have a look here). On the other hand - well, it has recently passed a new statute called the Graffiti Prevention Act 2007, which creates a bundle of new criminal offences and gives the police new powers of search, which hardly seems to fit with its marketing of Melbourne as the city of cool street art.

Nowhere to Paint, Nowhere to Learn (Find Original Article Here)
Posted By: Jason Youmans
07/30/2008 8:00 AM

By cracking down on street art of all sorts, has the city lost a valuable tool in the battle against bad graffiti?

As Monday learned after publishing a recent editorial in defense of graffiti, it seems no one in Victoria likes the lowly tagger. But in a city quick to buff the first sign of unsolicited spray paint from its walls while offering no alternative for budding Banksys* to feed their egos and make their names known, the Garden City is setting itself up for a tourism-dependent town’s worst nightmare—an endless cycle of really crappy graffiti.

Monday recently caught up with a decade-long veteran of the local aerosol art community to talk about the city’s graffiti scene, why there are so many trashy tags and what happens when there’s no place for people to hone their skills without fear of getting cuffed by the cops. For obvious reasons, he wishes to remain anonymous, so we’ll call him Rusto—after a paint popular among that set.

Graffiti vandals turn violent in LA
Aug 1 02:35 PM US/Eastern By THOMAS WATKINS Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) - One man got stabbed. Another got shot in the chest. A 6-year-old boy was temporarily blinded when he was spray-painted in the face.

And they were the lucky ones among those who have had run-ins with graffiti "crews," or gangs.

Over the past 2 1/2 years in Southern California, three people have been killed after trying to stop graffiti vandals in the act. A fourth died after being shot while watching a confrontation between crews in a park.

By CHUCK BENNET
NY Post (Link to Original Article)

No hefty price tag for ignoring S.F. graffiti

Original SF Chronicle Article

Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

San Francisco officials have made graffiti cleanup a crusade over the past few years, pushing for the prosecution of vandals and fighting to hold private citizens accountable for tagging on their properties.

But a lack of money to pay city lawyers to go after the property owners has hobbled a much-touted anti-graffiti law, several members of the city's graffiti advisory board say.