Fairey's art of hypocrisy
I don't know about you, but I'm still terribly aggrieved that Shepard Fairey, l'artiste vandale, was dragged out of a taxi cab on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art and forced to spend a night in police custody.
They should have kept him locked up the whole weekend.
And Eddie Davis should give Billy Kelley, a good cop, a few comp days for the pinch. If Billy had waited until Fairey had gotten inside the ICA and been handed, but not yet sipped, a glass of champagne, I would have given him a week off.
I would have paid big money to listen to Fairey talk shop with members of the Castlegate gang on the basketball court of the Suffolk County Jail over the weekend. Given that both parties are into stealing stuff, it would have been a mutually beneficial conversation.
Fairey's arrest has spawned a debate on the concept of public art, at least art that is imposed on the public by self-important phonies who regard property rights the way some pols and rich folks do taxes: rules that should apply to everybody but them.
The Globe published an oh-so-wounded letter from some guy who runs a website called Karmaloop.com wailing mournfully about how Fairey's arrest explains why so many young artists flee this provincial, Puritanical backwater. (By the way, you can snap up one of Fairey's Paris Riots sweaters on Karmaloop for a mere $128. It's so . . . subversive!)
Funny. Last time I did the studio tours of the South End and Fort Point, the city seemed to be teeming with young, talented artists. And no doubt many of these struggling artists think that if only a wider section of the public could see their art, they wouldn't be struggling anymore. But they don't go out and paint on the Fiedler Footbridge or the Zakim Bridge. And they don't sculpt something, uninvited, on somebody's lawn in West Roxbury.
Now, given that the First Amendment helps put dinner on my table, I'm all for free expression. But if you're out for a walk, feel the call of nature, and decide to relieve yourself on my doorstep, that is not an act of free expression. I love Salman Rushdie. But if he breaks into my house, eats my food, and uses my iMac to write his next novel, I'm calling the ayatollahs.
Fairey's past as a tagger gives him street cred with the ICA crowd. It must be so cool to be young and hip and edgy. But the people who defend taggers as "artists" have the same mindset as the Manhattan socialites who defended self-described revolutionaries in the 1960s. Tom Wolfe coined a term for these fools: Radical Chic. Those who defend vandals like Shepard Fairey are the New Radical Chic.
Some of Fairey's defenders admire the iconic image of President Obama that Fairey "appropriated" from an Associated Press photograph. But it is more than a little rich that Fairey - who got lugged into Brighton District Court for blowing off an appearance related to tagging charges from nine years ago - is the first guy to go running to the courts when the law suits his interests.
This is the same guy who responded to the AP's claim that it owns the copyright on the Obama photo by hauling the AP into court.
And when some right-wing kook appropriated the Obama image that Fairey had appropriated from the AP, Fairey sicced his lawyers on him.
When you have an exhibit at the ICA, a clothing line, and a bunch of fawning critics hanging on your every word, you're not antiestablishment anymore. The C in ICA doesn't stand for counterculture.
To those who weep for Shepard Fairey, save your tears. He's laughing all the way to the bank.
With the skills he has honed, Fairey is wasting his time as an artist, anyway. He should go where his considerable talent for self-promotion and hypocrisy will be appropriately compensated and appreciated by his peers.
He should run for office.
Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com. 