Original subtitles

Shepard Fairey has exploited a notion

that art can be anywhere

to compete with advertising,

so I don't consider it art.

Well, the guy is famous for being a plagiarist.

It's vandalism.

Shepard Fairey is pillaging the work

of important political and cultural movements.

Shepard is a genius.

His artistic work overshadowed

by his alleged criminal activity.

He employs cut and paste as his artwork.

And at the end of the day, it's a very empty experience.

I think he's our generation's Warhol.

His work is too obvious.

He's reinvented a political image

for today's world.

A wheatpaste artist is not to be taken seriously.

The more famous he got in the art world,

the less fans he had.

He created an icon.

From the very beginning when

he was doing Andre the Giant,

the joke was on the public.

It meant nothing.

Not only is Shepard Fairey not an artist,

he's about the furthest thing from art there is.

Things are not all great in the world,

and it's not all the Carpenters

and love songs and Wings.

I grew up in the '70s,

and when I felt frustrated,

there was nothing that seemed like

the creative analogue to that.

But when I discovered punk rock,

the Sex Pistols talking about frustration,

the Clash talking about frustration,

Black Flag, very angry music.

But they also were not just angry

for the sake of being angry.

A lot of it was critiquing

the problem of conformity,

oppression,

corruption of power.

And all these things connected with me

because I grew up

in a very, very conformist town

at a conformist school,

and I was--I was frustrated.

Everything that I felt like wasn't being addressed

in other parts of the world and other parts of my life,

punk rock addressed.

Skateboarding too.

Skateboarding was about

creative reuse of the landscape

that was intended for other things,

and it's aggressive.

(grunting)

I was inspired by bands putting up flyers.

I was inspired by graffiti.

Graffiti culture is all about lettering

and putting your name up.

Colors, designs, style.

-Technical, advanced. -Just get loose.

Get loose, and when they see you got a vicious style,

they be wanting to get loose about it, you know,

and that's what keep it going.

And that's what sparks graffiti.

Right.

The technique of graffiti,

people going out

and doing daring locations anonymously,

and doing it for the sake of saying, "I exist,"

I kind of loved that.

I'm looking for the graffiti artists.

We are all graffiti artists.

Being from South Carolina

and watching movies like Breakin'

and Beat Street,

my assumption ignorantly was

that I had to be black or Latino

and be in a crew

where I'd practice in a black book

until some peer said

that I was ready to hit the streets.

You know, it's like an art gang.

To me, street art is any art that's done in public,

but what it's really about is democratizing art,

making art accessible,

saying that there's room for more in public space

than just commercial advertising

and government signage.

Where you get up,

how much you get up,

how daring the placement is,

and just the coverage, that's everything,

especially pre-internet,

because the credit you're getting

within that world

is based on people seeing

the different examples firsthand.

Some giant posters.

Andre the Giant.

Here we have this week on Piper's Pit, of course,

Andre the Giant,

supposedly the biggest man in the world ever.

It's a pleasure to have you.

Where are you from, Andre?

I'm sorry, do you speak English?

Where--Andre, where do you come from?

None of your business.

(crowd cheering)

The first thing I ever did as my own street art

is the Andre the Giant Has a Posse stickers.

I worked at a skate shop

the summer after my freshman year at RISD,

and I was putting up some of the stickers

of some of the brands I liked,

because I got the stickers free at the store.

And I was trying to teach a friend

how to make stencils,

so I looked through the newspaper

and saw this picture of Andre the Giant

and said, "Why don't you make a stencil of this?"

He said, "No way, I'm not gonna do that, it's stupid."

And I said, "What are you talking about?

Andre's posse is taking over,"

which was just a spontaneous joke.

We were listening to a lot of hip hop--

Ice-T, Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, NWA--

and they all used the word "posse."

I'm living large as possible

Posse unstoppable

Style topical It's vividly optical

Listen, you'll see 'em sometimes I'll be 'em

Cops, critics, and punks

never ever want to see me in power

And I made a few stickers just as a joke.

Only a few friends knew about it.

Put some up at some skate spots.

I had a fake ID so I put some up in some clubs.

Put some on some street signs.

And then I noticed that, you know,

I was out at a party and I saw a guy

with one stuck to the front of a plain baseball cap,

and I could see paint chips at the edge,

so he'd clearly peeled it off something

and stuck it to the hat.

And, you know, I asked,

"Hey, what's up with that Andre thing?"

He was like, "I don't know, you know,

I saw it on the street, I thought it was fresh."

And I realized very quickly

that even though the subject was totally silly

that it was spreading

in an underground, mysterious way.

It impacted people.

What the hell do you think you're doing?

And I knew that when I'd seen things

like the Bob Dobbs Church of the SubGenius,

the '50s guy with the pipe,

I was like, "What is that thing?

What's the story behind that thing?

I want to know, I want to get to the bottom of this."

I just had a feeling

that it would be likeminded people

perpetuating it,

and I think that that was the effect

that my Andre sticker had on other people.

Not all of them.

There's a huge range of reactions.

I remember seeing somebody writing very small

in the negative space in ballpoint pen on one:

"Nazi shit."

Any painter, any poet,

any musician sets a trap for your attention.

That is the nature of art.

The great thing about Andre the Giant Has a Posse

is that it somehow doesn't have to mean anything

and it's still very cool.

It must be a cult, it's deviant.

There's no--there's no overt purpose.

By proclaiming this posse,

it was talking about skate posses, right,

this idea that, like, you know,

kids form tribal communities

in music and art and skateboarding, whatever.

But it was also talking about how,

on a mass cultural level,

that we are unconsciously aligning ourselves

with forces all the time.

This is my propaganda.

See, a lot of people use models for propaganda.

You associate the product

with an attractive person,

and therefore that makes it desirable.

I don't want to be as straightforward as that.

One time I was in the grocery store

behind a couple,

and the girl said,

"Hey, have you seen that Andre the Giant sticker?"

And the guy's like, "Yeah, I've seen that."

She goes, "What is it?"

And he goes, "I think it's a band,"

and she says, "Nah, I don't think so.

I think it has something to do with skateboarding."

And he goes, "It's a band.

I've heard them before."

He just made that up on the spot.

I thought, that's so fascinating

how, you know, people want to...

really trust their instincts

and their interpretation,

and then they're gonna argue for that.

This paper in Providence called The Nice Paper

printed an Andre sticker, and they said,

"Anyone who knows what the Andre the Giant

sticker campaign is about wins free tickets

to The Living Room show of your choice."

The Living Room was where I saw Jane's Addiction,

the Ramones, Suicidal Tendencies,

Bad Brains.

I wanted those tickets.

But I wasn't gonna let the cat out of the bag,

so I put some stickers in an envelope

and wrote a note that says,

"I'm sorry, I can't tell you what it is

'cause that would ruin it, but here's some stickers

if it's any consolation,"

and left them at their address.

Then the next week,

they ran another picture of the sticker

with my note, and it said,

"No answers, but we do now have a handwriting sample."

Within two weeks,

that's 30,000 impressions in The Nice Paper,

which is 15 times what I'd put out there.

Now this made me think about how

certain media centers in the United States

can make something seem more pervasive,

more powerful, more relevant,

more important

by just giving it attention.

At that point in my life,

I was still in college,

so I was working on school projects.

I worked at the skate shop for part of the time,

then I worked for a small clothing company

called Jobless Anti-Work Wear.

They were one of the first street wear companies.

And one of the designs I made for Jobless

that I was paid $50 for,

they sold tens of thousands of units of that shirt.

All I did was I took the still from The Shining

where Jack's doing the "Here's Johnny,"

and then I went to Kinko's and got on a typewriter

and typed, "All work and no play

makes Jack a dull boy,"

a little off, you know?

It's a little off, just like his mind.

Immediate hit,

and that was an exciting thing for me

because it made me feel like

I could do this stuff.

We knew that he was extremely artistic,

and back then our neighbor,

who was the art teacher at Porter-Gaud, said,

"That child is so talented.

Don't dare give him any lessons.

You'll ruin him.

Just let him develop on his own."

My little circle of friends at Porter-Gaud,

we were not the super cool group

and we were not the nerd group.

To be in the cool group,

you had to be an uber jock,

which I wasn't interested in.

And I definitely didn't want to be teased

like the nerd group.

What you were made fun of about

was frequently things like

if you wore Toughskins jeans

instead of Levi's jeans,

or you didn't have Polo shirts.

And my parents always said to me,

"We're not spending the money on that type of stuff,

and if people are mean to you about it,

then they're not real friends."

And I said, "I know, they're not real friends."

I need all the help I can get to survive

because it was all preppy, spoiled,

smart little fucks.

In early high school,

I was still having to wear

a coat and tie to school,

but my rebellion was to wear my dad's

really ridiculous '70s paisley ties

that to me just looked like,

you know, barf on a tie,

and, okay, I have to wear a tie,

but it's not gonna be one

that everyone wants to look at.

By that time, he was into the skateboard culture,

and he was fully into wanting to do

nothing but what he wanted to do.

I really just thought, "No one here gets it,

and I'm gonna find my way

and not worry about what anybody thinks."

We'd sat down with him one weekend and said,

"Okay, things are not working here,

and you would like to run your life,

and we're gonna let you."

He very quickly said, "I want to be an artist,

and--and I want to go to art school."

And we said, "Fine."

So he went from studying 14 minutes a day

to working 14 hours a day,

and created a portfolio

that got him into Rhode Island School of Design.

Hard to do in a year.

Hard to do.

Growing up in South Carolina,

watercolor, charcoal,

oil painting,

that's the only legitimate art.

But then I go to art school

and I learn about Jasper Johns.

Duchamp.

Rauschenberg.

Andy Warhol.

Barbara Kruger.

And an artist whose name

I didn't know yet

had put these posters up

of Ronald Reagan

that was an unflattering painting

and it said "contra" above

and "diction" below

in bold type on a yellow background

with this black and white unflattering painting,

and I thought,

wow, this--you know, this is political.

Just like the way the Dead Kennedys

were protesting Reagan,

you know, this artist is protesting Reagan.

It's good wordplay.

It's got a little bit of a, you know, sense of humor

but it's also painted really well.

It's just to provoke people a little bit,

get 'em thinking,

and also entertain them on their way to work.

This has kind of got all the ingredients

I'm excited about.

Take that, Ronald Reagan.

Even in death, you're not safe from me.

That was a pivotal moment for me.

It was the work of Robbie Conal.

Robbie Conal.

He calls his work "urban beautification."

Others call it a mutant media fungus.

In any case, there is guerilla artfare

in our streets.

I was just trying to participate,

you know, in the national conversation

about these issues that I cared about,

like "democracy."

You know, I put it out there,

and hopefully it might stimulate

a little bit of thought

or get people to talk a little bit

about who is that, you know, ugly old white guy?

And it was illegal on purpose,

I mean, as a minor form of civil disobedience,

you know, like your higher crimes,

like Iran-Contra and all that stuff,

versus my municipal code violations.

Fuck you, you know, go ahead,

arrest me if you can find me.

This was Providence

before the vision of a new young mayor

started to pull it back from disintegration.

That young mayor was Buddy Cianci.

I had an illustration class

in the fall of 1990,

and I decided that I have to do something spectacular.

There was this billboard for Buddy Cianci

that was just him standing there waving

that said, "Cianci:

He never stopped caring about Providence."

Seemed like a really stupid billboard to me.

I didn't understand.

It didn't say anything

about a position on any issue.

So I made a big Andre head,

put it over Cianci's head,

and then I photographed that

and I turned that in for my illustration assignment.

One day, I got a call saying

that "your billboard on South Main Street there

is posted with Andre the Giant stickers

all over it."

The very next night, I was out,

and people started bringing me beers

to say, "Amazing,"

like, "Cheers to you."

And then on top of that,

Providence media went completely nuts with the story

because everyone read into the billboard.

What did the billboard mean?

It's a picture of Andre the Giant,

so it's saying that Cianci's a brute.

Only a few people really knew

that it really wasn't much of a commentary

on Cianci in that way,

but it made me realize the power of scale.

So going from primarily

a two-and-a-half, three inch sticker

to a huge billboard,

that really impacted the conversation a lot more.

Then I had to have a meeting with Buddy Cianci,

and he said, "Look, you know,

this thing cost me money.

What are we gonna do about it?"

I don't know whether he was for me

or against me,

but the fact of the matter was

it must have worked because we won the election.

We are going back to City Hall.

(cheering)

It also made me realize

that I needed to be careful

not to send the conversation

in a direction that maybe I didn't want it to go.

I hadn't compared what I thought

of the other candidates' views to Cianci's,

and if this had hurt Cianci's chances,

and I actually preferred him,

which it turned out that that wasn't the case,

I would have been--

I would have been devastated

that I was that careless.

So it made me think

this isn't just my own personal prank

for my enjoyment;

there--you know, there are consequences

to this sort of thing.

The summer of '90,

I got a hand-me-down car,

Caprice classic station wagon

with wood paneling,

kind of like the Griswolds.

And it wasn't in great shape,

but I knew I could drive it to Boston and back,

that was fairly safe.

Then I got more bold

and I started driving it to New York.

Of course, the first night

the car gets broken into,

my skateboards get stolen.

But they didn't take the big box of stickers.

So we walked around the Lower East Side

and Greenwich Village

putting up stickers,

and I loved it,

but quickly I started putting up stencils.

I realized that

the silver lamp bases in New York

are a perfect size

for an Andre head stencil.

I would carry a messenger bag

with a couple of cans of flat black spray paint

and a little bit of spray adhesive

so the stencil would stick,

and I would walk around

and I would stencil.

I've gotten away from helicopters,

from buildings surrounded by six cop cars,

but if you do get caught,

just be polite.

That's all I'd say.

I wasn't really thinking about the legality

of doing street art,

and the idea that someone didn't like it

because it was not done with permission,

that didn't really faze me at all.

(siren wailing)

At the time,

street art wasn't so hyped.

One of the things was is that

it somehow wasn't gonna be as real

or as subculturally genuine

as something like graffiti.

And then Shepard really impressed

a bunch of haters,

people who were normally like,

"Oh, street art's a bunch of, like,

you know, limp wristed art students."

The Alleged Gallery was the only gallery

that was showing artwork

derived from the three scenes

that I was really into.

The underground music scene,

the graffiti and street art scenes,

and skateboarding.

During the early '90s,

graffiti was linked to hip hop culture,

to break dancing culture,

to kind of hood culture.

And skateboarding was still,

even though there was always a nice little

sizable contingent of New York skaters,

it was a West Coast thing.

I trace the beginning of street art

versus graffiti art

to the merging of those two cultures,

which is, I think, why people look back on that time

as important.

When I met Shepard, he had, like,

such a thin body of work,

but the main thing is I remember

the impression he made on me,

so I put him in the show

and Aaron Rose put him in some shows.

And Shepard did his best to fine art it up

for the museum show,

but basically it was still

in the real DIY, handmade aspects

of the craft.

He was a skater that made stickers,

and I knew the sticker, but he didn't really

stick out to me at that point

as anyone more special or different

than any other young skater making stickers

on the East Coast during that time.

But I do remember that they were up everywhere,

and that grew and grew and grew.

So I had a few posters and my manifesto

that was taped to the wall in the gallery

and it talks about a lot of my feelings

about, you know, trend psychology,

conformity versus rebellion.

You know, a lot of the ideas that

are still driving my work to this day

are encapsulated in this very short piece

that I wrote when I was 20 years old.

There was a lot of artists

beginning to look at ways

in which we could break down visual language,

ways in which we could subvert

this fine art of persuasion.

Artists like Thomas Campbell,

Phil Frost,

Mike Mills,

Futura,

all these people were really important people

in the scene in New York.

If I'm able to connect with this world,

there might be more potential

for me to earn a living from this.

I'd graduated from school,

I was on my own,

and I was struggling to survive.

My parents were constantly on my case

to get a "real job,"

and my idea of having

my screen printing studio,

doing my own projects

and doing things for bands,

you know, didn't seem like it was gonna pan out.

And then all of a sudden,

this attention from people in New York

made me think it was a remote possibility.

The crazy thing about Andre the Giant

being the subject of my sticker

is that I had no interest

in professional wrestling.

When I started that,

that was just a bit of--

creative mischief would be

about as much dignity as I'd give it.

But the idea of having a reference point

that people might consider in one way

and then using it artistically in a different way,

that's provocative,

and I love provocative art.

The interesting thing is

that more and more I was seeing

this fear of the image,

as if it were some sort of cult

or a gang or something to be fearful of.

That was what led me in the direction

of going in a more

"Big brother is watching you"

Orwellian way with the imagery.

But my approach to maintaining

the momentum I had

was to create what I call the Icon Face,

which is, you know, a perfectly symmetrical,

cropped in, very, very simplified

stylized version of the Andre face.

Then I did the face inside the star,

which has been amazing

to see the responses to that.

This is actually propaganda that we're seeing here.

"You better just do your own thing

and have sex with who you want

and do a whole bunch of drugs,

'cause that's what we promote.

We're a bunch of Satanists."

"Oh, it's a pentagram and that's Satan in there.

Oh, and it's 'cause it's Russian

or it's Chinese or it's Illuminati.

It's definitely Illuminati."

You know, like, we use the star

in the American flag too.

But with the face and the color red,

then it's gotta be Satan

or communist or something.

I mean, there were years

where people would come to my website,

especially when my website was called

AndretheGiant.com,

where they would say,

"What are you doing with this communist style imagery

with our hero,

the Eighth Wonder of the World?

This amazing athlete,

you're disrespecting him."

And I would just say,

"I'm sorry if you're offended,

I'm doing something else.

I think Andre the Giant's awesome."

(laughing)

One thing that Andre's estate said to me is,

"You can't make

the Andre the Giant Has a Posse sticker

as something that you're selling commercially.

It looks too much like the real Andre the Giant.

That's gonna be copyright infringement."

They didn't want to come after the Star Face

or the Icon Face because they knew

that they were too far removed,

they were too transformative

for them to say,

"This is a copyright infringement."

There was a while that I was doing a lot of work

inspired by Russian Constructivist work,

which is very streamlined

and minimal color palette,

and uses exclamation points,

arrows, you know,

really, really bold typography,

dramatic angles.

When I started getting into

the Russian Constructivist work,

I also coincidentally saw this movie

called "They Live" by John Carpenter...

which coincidentally starred

Rowdy Roddy Piper,

a retired wrestler,

so there's this connection

to the Andre the Giant thing.

The premise of the movie

is that everybody in the world

is living sort of under this alien control,

but they don't know it.

Excuse me.

You look like your head fell in the cheese dip

back in 1957.

(gasps)

I thought the film was gonna be terrible

because I rented it from

the $1 grocery store rental,

but it actually has a fairly profound message.

I've got one that can see.

And that's that you have to...

pay attention to...

what's going on behind the scenes,

and the manipulation,

the undercurrent of conformity

and submission.

There's a scene in "They Live"

when Rowdy Roddy Piper

puts on the sunglasses for the first time

and he looks around

and he sees that all the advertisements

that normally say things like "Sale"

say "Consume,"

"Marry and Reproduce,"

"Submit,"

"Obey."

The word "obey" in that movie,

designed in the Barbara Kruger style,

which whoever was the set designer for "They Live"

was definitely inspired by Barbara Kruger,

who I was already a fan of.

I'm thinking about 1984 and George Orwell,

Barbara Kruger,

and it just hit me.

What is the thing that people do the most

subconsciously,

but that they resist the most

when commanded in a way that they're conscious of?

You know, obey.

The first work that I did with "obey"

was super simple.

It was just a crop in

on the grainy face of Andre

from the original Andre sticker

with a red bar below it

that just said "obey" in Futura type.

I did that for a short time,

then later I did the illustration

of the face that's the simplified Icon Face

that a lot of people know now.

It's been the one I've been using

basically since early 1996.

I started using the word "obey" in my work

a lot more than the word "Giant,"

even though they both would surface,

but I became really, really fascinated

with "obey" and people's responses to it.

People ask me what it means

and I say, "Well, what do you think it means?"

And they go, "I don't know, what does it mean?"

I'm like, "No, no, no,

what do you think it means?"

And sometimes they get so mad

at being put on the spot,

it's like how people hate

to interpret poetry or something,

or a piece of art that doesn't--

that's abstract, like, they get--they get mad.

They get mad because they're uncomfortable

with their own interpretation

because it might be wrong

by the, you know, the "experts" on the subject.

I had just moved to San Diego

and I was working as a graphic designer.

I'd just come back from lunch

at this Mexican restaurant

that had a logo

of a cow and a pig,

both wearing aprons holding meat cleavers

like they're about to carve each other up

and eat each other,

but they're best friends also,

and I thought it was...

a really bizarre logo.

Just so happened that I had moved back into town

and ran into this guy Damon Bell

who went to, like,

the neighboring high school to me,

and...and he... he invited me to have lunch,

and...at his office,

and I was talking about this taco shop.

I was saying, "It's so bizarre

because the logo,

it's a pig and a cow

wearing aprons and chef's hats,

and they each have cleavers in their hands,

and they have-- they're arm in arm.

It's like they're just gonna eat each other."

And so I say this,

and then Shepard comes around the corner

out of the lobby

holding a 32 ounce soda cup

with that logo on it.

First thing Amanda did was comment on the cup.

She said, "Oh yeah, that's that new spot.

Their logo is totally bizarre."

I fell in love right away.

I didn't know who he was.

You know, I just thought,

"Oh, he's kind of a cute skater boy,"

like, he's cute,

but I was seeing somebody at the time.

As soon as she left,

Damon, who had introduced her to me,

came over and said...

"She's cute, right?"

And I said, "Yeah."

And then he goes, "Don't even think about it,

she's dating Mirko."

And Mirko was this former pro skateboarder,

half-black, half-Italian, total Adonis.

So as soon as I find out that Amanda's dating Mirko,

forget it.

I've got no chance with Amanda.

Then after that, we kept seeing each other

around downtown 'cause I lived down there

and he worked down there.

And so he was like, "Oh, hey,"

and we became kind of buddies a little bit.

Apparently things weren't going that well

with Mirko and, uh,

one night I was at this cafe

where I always played pool

and she showed up there and told me

that she was there to study

and get a cup of coffee.

So we're talking and we're talking

and I said, you know,

"I didn't come here to do my homework."

Um, I said, you know, "I came here to see you."

And he was just like, "Oh."

I'm not very forward so I was so relieved

that she said she came to find me,

so I said, "Oh, well, you know,

here's a...here's my card, here's my home number

if you want to get together some time."

So I call and I was just like,

"All right, he's not there."

And I called back like a couple hours later.

Still not there.

I must have called like five times.

I had seven missed calls from Amanda.

That's awesome, she likes me.

I knew he was an artist and graphic designer.

But I don't--

I wasn't familiar with his sticker campaign.

Later on when we went on a date

and then we went back to her house,

I had wheatpaste in the trunk of my car.

So after I left her place,

there was a construction wall

across the street, I did a bunch of posters on it.

I started realizing

these giant ominous face posters

were showing up all on this wall.

And her friend was like, "That's Shepard,

that's the guy you're dating."

And, um...

I was sort of like, "Huh.

Did you do that?"

And he was like, "Yeah," he did do that.

So it was sort of like he was

decorating my neighborhood for me.

I didn't quite understand what he was doing.

I said, "What are you trying to make us obey?"

But hearing his explanation

of what Obey meant

and that really it's just telling everyone

to open their eyes, I loved that.

When I started dating Amanda,

I had a great travel companion.

And someone that was willing to be an accomplice.

We started traveling, you know,

pretty early in our relationship together.

And we noticed most any place that we went,

he had been there before

and there was some remnant

of what he had done.

She'd go with me to San Francisco,

she'd go with me to Tokyo, Hong Kong.

If it had been a good week

and I had a teeny bit of money,

we'd stay at a $25 a night hotel

and go out all night putting posters up,

go out to brunch the next day.

Yeah, it was really a Bonnie and Clyde romance.

It was awesome.

And he never asked me to look out for him,

but I felt compelled to be looking around like...

Amanda just, I think, thought it was good fun

and mischief and something we bonded over.

Look at me and smile, baby.

Huh?

Nah!

Those cute white legs of yours.

In the beginning I'd grab some stickers

and I was like, "I can put this up too."

Then I'd be a little bit nervous

and I'd just throw it up

and walk away really fast

and he'd be like,

"You can't put the stickers up crooked!"

And I'm like, "Ah..."

I'm not going back to fix it.

That's so awesome, it looks great.

She didn't mind staying out at night bombing,

she didn't mind the risk, at first.

And then I started getting arrested a lot.

(sirens)

Everyone thinks being arrested's no big deal

until it actually happens to them

and they see what it's like firsthand.

(sirens)

(radio dispatch)

Whether it's, you know,

not letting me make my phone call,

not letting me have access

to something to drink

or access to a bathroom,

putting the handcuffs on too tight.

I've been denied my insulin in jail

four times,

and two of the times it was so bad

that I got really sick.

Well, in the first few dates

he told me he was Type 1 diabetic.

So I wanted him to be really careful

because, I mean, he could die.

When I was arrested in Philadelphia,

a guard kept walking by,

every time he'd walk by, I'd say,

"Excuse me, sir, I'm a Type 1 diabetic.

I haven't had insulin in close to 24 hours.

I could get very sick

from not getting my insulin."

He wouldn't even acknowledge my existence.

And then finally came to the door of the cell.

As he's unlocking it,

I walked up closer to the door and said,

"Thank you so much,

I'm sorry to keep saying something

when you're walking by."

The moment he had the door open,

he just goes boom in the face,

knocks me back,

closes the door again and says,

"Shut the fuck up unless you want it

to be worse the next time."

The next morning when I got him out,

he pulls up to a taxi cab

that I'm outside with

and he gets in the car and he's green.

And he basically gets into the cab and vomits.

And I'm looking at him like,

"What is wrong?"

And he said, "They wouldn't give me my insulin."

These things happen to people all the time,

but when I tell people they don't believe me.

They think that I'm exaggerating to sound cool

and it's part of my rebel image

I'm trying to cultivate.

I mean, this happened in multiple places

where he wasn't given his insulin.

That's when I started getting really scared

about him getting caught.

Police officer-- I'm not gonna arrest you.

I'm not gonna arrest you,

I just wanna talk to you, dude.

Don't film from that side,

film from this side over here.

You understand why, right?

Because you're gonna attract attention.

It was not legal, that's for sure.

Everything was not legal,

but, you know,

we were not thinking as much.

We didn't have kids

or something to be worried about.

Ooh!

Thierry was unusual

in that he would take the same risks

holding a video camera.

To get the shot, I would go up more

to get the right shot to film him.

Yeah, it was hard.

I would call him,

"Shepard, should we do something tonight?

Shepard, should we do something?"

He's like, "Oh!"

Every night.

He followed me for five years relentlessly

is the only way I can put it.

Yeah, this is good.

Except if you have the light on--

I mean, I had kind of a love-hate relationship

with Thierry.

Thierry, get out of here

with the camera, okay?

He was very aggravating

but he could also be really endearing.

And he's pretty crazy

in a lot of really irritating ways

but also some kind of cool ways.

And when I see like the shot I'm filming

and it's a little bit dark,

I would put the light and he would like

turn around and like freak.

No, no, no, don't use that.

"Turn off the light, turn off the light!

And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah!"

And three minutes later, I put back the light.

"Turn off the light!"

I let Thierry follow me because I thought

that he would get a perspective

that no one else would get.

All right, let's go.

And he did.

He had a focus,

he had a goal,

and was making it a reality.

It's why I stay next to him.

But there is always a beginning of it

and you got the beginning.

When Bush was elected in 2000,

I wasn't happy about it.

And then when Bush started talking

about Iraq after 9/11,

I was completely perplexed by that.

There's no question that the leader of Iraq

is an evil man.

We know he's been developing

weapons of mass destruction.

And so we're watching him very carefully.

We're watching him carefully.

I was asked at the time,

"Well, do you think that, you know,

in the wake of 9/11 it's time for you

to censor yourself a little bit

because people are very sensitive right now?"

I said, "No, no, now is the time

to be even more outspoken

because so many people are censoring themselves

that only these voices

of fear and aggression

are being heard.

I have to make work that's, you know,

a counter-narrative."

In 2004,

before the election,

Robbie Conal,

who'd been one of my big inspirations

with his Reagan Contradiction,

as well as various other political posters

and a graffiti artist named Mear

and I all collaborated

on anti-Bush posters.

It was so moving to me, man,

because that's my job.

They were doing great art,

but they weren't doing anything near, you know,

adversarial portraits of George fucking Bush,

you know?

And there they were, these young guys,

coming to the old guy, you know, my turf,

saying, "Come on, let's go.

What have you done for us lately?"

You know, I'm going like, "This is great."

You know, I started crying, like...

Mine had Bush hugging a bomb and it said,

"...Or was it hug babies and drop bombs?"

Mear had a Bush with a paper airplane

with an explosion in the back that said,

"Let's play Armageddon."

Robbie Conal's was a Bush caricature

that said, "Read My Apocalips."

And we had a postering party.

We got everybody to a parking lot,

gave everybody buckets of glue, brushes,

and we plastered LA

with those posters, you know,

from Venice to East LA.

And it was-- it was pretty great.

ABC News has learned that Senator John Kerry

will concede the presidential election

of 2004.

Ladies and gentleman,

I give you the President of the United States.

(cheering)

I really was stunned

when Bush was re-elected in 2004.

(cheering)

One of the things I thought about was

that fear seemed to be

so much more persuasive

than an aspiration

to do right by humanity.

(applause)

After continuing to make

anti-war and anti-Bush images

throughout his second term,

one of the things I'd come to terms with

is that what works in American politics

isn't the most sophisticated argument usually.

It's the most relatable argument.

Vivienne had been born in 2005.

Obey Giant.

Yeah!

Bless you!

Amanda was pregnant with Madeline.

And I was thinking

not about what's going to...

shore up my brand as a rebel

but really what kind of--

what kind of presidency do I want

my kids to be growing up under.

Do we participate

in a politics of cynicism

or do we participate in a politics of hope?

It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire

singing freedom songs.

The hope of immigrants

setting out for distant shores.

The hope of a young naval lieutenant

bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta.

The hope of a millworker's son

who dares to defy the odds.

The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name

who believes that America has a place for him too.

(cheering)

I had seen Obama's speech at the DNC in 2004

and I thought that that was a strong speech.

I started to look at more of his speeches,

more of his writing, his policy positions,

and I thought,

"Okay, this is someone

I could actually be for

rather than just being against stuff."

I was frequently against stuff,

and that's a very easy way for people

in the counterculture to go,

and it's the most common way for people to go.

To stand for something, in a lot of ways,

takes more courage than to just be critical.

Senator Barack Obama!

A young charismatic senator named Barack Obama.

Illinois Junior Senator Barack Obama.

Hello, everybody.

Hi, how are you?

These senators have co-sponsored

the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act.

The most important thing

that we can do right now

is to re-engage the American people

in the process of governing

to get them excited and interested again

in what works and what can work

in our government.

We will change the course of history,

and the real journey to heal the nation

and repair the world will have truly begun.

Thank you.

One of the things that I was worried about

creating an image for Obama

was that I would be an unwelcome endorsement.

I wanted to be helpful not hurtful,

so I had a friend who knew someone

that was helping with the Obama campaign,

they reached out, said,

"Hey, do you guys mind

if Shepard does a poster in support?"

And they said, "No, it's cool.

We know his stuff.

Yeah, tell him to go ahead."

The concept was to use

red, white, and blue tones

within a portrait where the lighting

was hitting Obama's face in a way

that half his face would be red

and the other half would be blue and white,

but that, you know,

they would be converging in the middle.

The idea that, you know,

they can come together.

I also had been a big fan of, you know,

the John F. Kennedy where he's sort of

got that gaze into the future,

and there's a reason that it connects with people,

that idea that someone's looking off into the distance

and they know something about the future

that you don't know yet.

That's powerful.

So then I just looked through Google Images

to find images that had the right lighting,

the right tilt to the head,

and I found about five different reference images

that I thought I could make the illustration from.

And then chose the one that everyone knows.

The first 750 posters I printed

said "Progress" at the bottom,

but then someone from the Obama campaign said,

"Hope and Change are really

the slogans that we're using,"

so I changed it to "Hope" because I do think

that for the entire eight years of Bush,

a lot of people felt hopeless.

So I really like-- I liked "Hope."

That's the original "Hope" poster.

And I said, "You guys are free to use the image."

And they said, "No, we don't want to use the image

because it's grassroots,

it's coming from the margins,

it's not coming from the campaign."

And they were right about that.

I wanted the image to get out there,

so I put a free download on my website.

Any time someone said,

"There's gonna be a rally in Denver,

we need posters,"

I had people shipping stuff out.

And any time a magazine said,

"Can we reprint the image?"

I sent them the file.

I was doing interviews about it almost daily

and it just kept growing until the election.

Eventually, I printed 300,000 posters

and half a million stickers.

They didn't offer to pay me

and I didn't ask to be paid.

I did sell a couple of paintings

of the Obama image and 1200 prints

to pay for the 500,000 stickers

and 300,000 posters,

but one of the things that was very important to me

was that it didn't appear

that I was motivated financially

to do any of the work I was doing.

You must be loaded these days.

Are you rolling in it?

Is this your cash cow?

Do you say, "Cha-ching, no more art"?

Is this it?

Are you retiring on this thing?

No, I'm not.

What do you mean-- what do you mean?

You gotta be making some cash

off this thing, right?

Well, it's--

I benefit from this in other ways.

One is Obama's gonna be president.

(cheering)

It was crazy to see an image of mine

that wasn't created by the Obama campaign

become as well-known

or more well-known

than anything that was created officially.

Country first, all right?

That's what I'm saying.

Obama sent me a letter saying, you know,

"I'd like to thank you for using your art

in support of my campaign."

The bottom is signed, "Barack Obama."

With an actual signature with a pen.

(Shepard laughs)

Could be like Warhol

and his mom does his signature

or his assistant or something,

but I'd like to believe

Barack wrote this and signed this.

It makes me feel awesome.

He's got my vote.

(cheering)

(chanting "Obama")

It was my mom's birthday, November 4th,

and Amanda and I went to a big event

at this convention hall.

(cheering)

I mean, this-- this just relief

that was so overwhelming hit me

and I just started weeping.

It--and I called my mom.

It was--it was really awesome.

Black, white, Hispanic,

Asian, Native American,

gay, straight,

disabled and not disabled.

Americans have sent a message to the world

that we have never been

just a collection of individuals

or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are and always will be

the United States of America.

(cheering)

All of a sudden, an image I made

was known almost universally.

I walked through the Washington, D. C. airport

on the way to the inauguration

and there were bootleg mugs,

t-shirts, sweatshirts.

It was surreal.

It was ridiculous.

And it was exciting for me

to feel like I did something

that started with the 750 posters

and now it was known around the world.

Then the Obama campaign asked me to do

a "Change" poster based on a different photograph

and then a "Vote" poster

based on a different photograph.

And they sold those to fundraise for the campaign.

And I also, during that period of time,

was developing my very first solo museum show

at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art.

Now it definitely looks like

the entire thing still needs to rotate

really counterclockwise.

It was planned before the Obama poster

was even created,

but then, of course,

the museum was really excited

about how much my profile had risen

during the course of the year.

Joining me now is Shepard Fairey.

He is a familiar name in the art world

for his street work and guerilla advertising.

This is the official inauguration poster.

Shepard was getting a ton of attention.

Most people knew him

from the Andre the Giant sticker

to the Obama image, right?

So you had Andre and Obama as bookends,

but everything in the middle

most people hadn't seen.

The prints, the paintings,

the handpainted multiples.

Putting all of that together in one space

had never been done.

Leading up to my first solo museum show

at the Boston ICA,

I went out to Boston a couple of times

and put some posters up around town

like I normally do, and some stickers.

One of the most interesting things

about that show in Boston, though,

was we did a lot of outdoor work.

Property owners gave us a platform

to beautify derelict buildings.

Building owners gave us space.

So we had lots of walls.

That caught the attention of a detective.

Not the posters actually at first,

what caught his attention

was that I said,

in an NPR interview,

that I believed that street art

was a valid movement

and that I, you know,

I stood behind my actions

as a street artist.

And I guess he found this

very, very offensive.

Do you think the people who do find it intrusive

to have street art on the side of their building

or on public property,

like, you know, stop signs,

do you think that they have a point?

Graffiti, street art

is not appropriate everywhere,

and my approach is to try to find

the most appropriate places

where the art can be integrated,

I can communicate with people.

I'm a tax payer,

theoretically I own a little bit

of the public space myself.

And I can put stuff out there

that creates the least inconvenience for others.

I'll only put my work on buildings

that are boarded up or dilapidated

or already have other graffiti on them.

We were in Boston

and it was the night of the opening,

like the biggest exhibition of his life,

Shepard and I get into a taxi cab

to go to the Boston ICA.

And then I get a text from Amanda,

"Shepard has been taken by the police."

Three cop cars pull up,

one of them gets in front of our taxi,

one of 'em is behind us,

and one of 'em blocks us in on the side.

I'm thinking, "What the hell is going on?"

I really thought that maybe the cab driver

had like a brick of coke in the car.

So they had nine undercover cars,

unmarked SUVs.

"Get out of the car, get down on the ground."

They rip him out of the car,

throw him on the ground,

and handcuff him.

They pulled me out and they arrested me

and they charged me with 32 felonies.

(booing)

(cheering)

Let's keep this thing moving, man.

I was horrified, I couldn't believe it.

I was offended.

I thought, you know, we did this show,

we're bringing this artist to the city.

It's, you know, tons of press for Boston.

He was shaking hands with the mayor.

You know, it was--

it was absolutely ridiculous.

It's not like Shepard's never spent time in jail.

It's just that, you know,

usually when he's left in jail over the weekend

they neglect his dia--

Sorry.

They just neglect his diabetes and everything

and it's like-- and he gets sick.

I was scared.

I was scared for Shepard.

The street artist who gained national fame

for his red, white, and blue posters

of President Obama

was arrested last night in Boston.

The Boston Globe reports Fairey was arrested

on two outstanding warrants.

So I get a-- one of the lawyers

that somebody from the museum knows

and we go down to the courthouse.

And we get him out, we get him out

really early in the morning.

And that's when they told me

it's because of charges of vandalism.

(telephone keypad beeping)

Thank you so much for tuning in to Call the Cops.

My name is Officer Jamie Kenneally.

As always, we got a--

yeah, a big show in store.

Tonight we have Detective Bill Kelly in the house.

Can I call you the Guru of Graffiti, sir?

You can use that word--

whatever word you want to use.

There are police officers

that are running the anti-graffiti squad

in Boston.

And their whole career

is about catching graffiti artists.

And, you know, Shepard is, you know,

he's a stag with big antlers.

You know, I'm sure they saw him

as a major trophy.

The difference between graffiti and art

is permission, okay?

If it looks so good

and it's art and it's that great,

then how come it's not on the front door

of your parents' house?

How come it's not on your car?

How come it's not on your father's business?

If it's that good, if it's art,

then maybe you should put it on a canvas

and try to sell it.

He kept using this phrase over and over,

that I was someone who was...

...disrespecting the commonwealth.

"I'm not gonna let someone

disrespect the commonwealth."

That's what he kept saying.

"You can't come here,

disrespect the commonwealth,

and expect not to get arrested."

The vandalism charges against him in Boston

are not his first.

He's been charged with numerous

graffiti-related or tagging charges

throughout the country.

Shepard tended to do work

on derelict buildings.

And alongside his work are often ads

for Madewell and Urban Outfitters,

other paper ads,

which are just as illegal

as what Shepard's doing, right?

There's no difference.

It's the same material,

it's put up illegally,

it's not like these companies

are paying permits.

They pay a company to put it up,

but it's still an illegal form of advertising.

So it was selective enforcement.

They weren't going after these companies,

they were going after Shepard.

I was arrested based on the fact

that there were some posters

and stickers around Boston.

And, in fact, most of the charges against me

were for stickers,

but they didn't--

they didn't care about that.

They wanted to charge me felony charges

for every single poster and sticker

that they could find.

My understanding is that Detective Kelly

was taking out new charges.

He would literally walk around town

and see a sticker

and take out a new felony charge.

The felony charges carried a potential

of two and a half years per charge.

So, 32 charges adds up

to something like 83 years,

potentially, in prison.

So, all of a sudden,

I went from having my first museum solo show

about to open,

the inauguration and all the hoopla

for--around the Obama poster

that came with that.

My original art piece of Obama

going into the National Portrait Gallery,

the Smithsonian,

to I'm arrested in Boston

and then a couple of days later

the Associated Press called the office

to say, you know,

you used our photograph

for the "Hope" poster

and we want to see all of your financial records

on the image.

The image by artist Shepard Fairey

became an unofficial emblem

of this Barack Obama campaign.

And this is a 2006 Associated Press photo.

The AP says that required permission.

They were very aggressive.

They said, "If there was any money

made from it, we want it."

Now because I'd given all the money

back to the campaign or invested in making posters,

that wasn't gonna be possible.

So there were some lawyers that said,

"We're not gonna let them do that to you,

we wanna take on your case."

I was sent on an assignment

to photograph George Clooney

who was visiting Washington, D. C.

I found an image of Obama and George Clooney side by side

at a Darfur conference

but it was a small, low-resolution image.

I liked the way Obama was looking up in that image,

so I continued to search

and I found a better resolution crop-in

just on Obama.

I get a phone call from a colleague of mine

named Tom Gralish,

he's at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

He said, "Man, you know, this is a big deal.

The Obama photograph, it's yours,

I can prove it."

I felt good.

I was like, "Damn.

Dang, this is really cool."

When we made our counter to the AP's claims

for copyright infringement,

we said, "I think what I did is fair use,

but if you disagree, I'm a reasonable person,

I would be willing to pay the $300 licensing fee."

I was concerned about the attitude that was taken

by Shepard Fairey

and his attitude was very bold.

"Yes, I took this image.

Yes, I changed this image.

I did something transformative

to this image

and I have no legal responsibility to the AP."

And that was his position.

The photographer who took the picture of Barack Obama

at the center of a lawsuit

now wants to join the court case.

Anthony Falzone,

with Stanford University's Fair Use Project,

says there's no infringement here.

At a minimum, fair use protects Shepard's right

to do what he did.

I think that there can be creativity

even within elements of recycling,

and I absolutely think that there's--

it has democratized this process

in a way that's incredibly powerful

for people who were frequently powerless before,

and I couldn't be happier about it.

It was brave.

But it was also very, uh...

It was the start of something bad.

I had been seen putting a sticker up

by an off-duty policeman

who then, once the case became so high-profile,

came forward and said, "Yeah, you know,

I saw that guy.

I told him to climb back up on that pole

and peel the sticker down," which I did.

And then there was another spot

where there's a boarded up window

where there was a poster and it was fairly elaborate,

so they basically negotiated with my lawyer and said,

"If he admits those two things

and accepts them as misdemeanors,

and pays a fine,

then we'll let it go,

we'll let that be the resolution."

Two misdemeanors,

you know, it's a pretty minor deal

compared to 32 felonies.

Big, big, big difference.

-Thank you. -Thank you.

I'm just glad to be putting it behind me.

You know, I'd like to continue making art

and move forward with my career.

I'm just happy to, you know, to be getting through this.

Even though Boston, the criminal charges

were resolved by the end of the summer

which was several months after they were initiated,

keep in mind that I was still dealing with

this back and forth with The Associated Press

and now the AP's saying that I'm trying to lie

about which photograph I used.

There was a lot of clamor

about the image was actually one

where George Clooney is in the left side of the frame,

but there was no question,

it was never that image, never,

and I don't know why the-- how the dialogue started,

who started it, or why.

When the lawsuit started and my lawyers asked me,

"What photo did you use?"

I said, "I used a cropped version

of this photo of Obama and George Clooney."

Good afternoon and welcome to

the National Press Club.

And what it turned out was that

the cropped version was zoomed in and shot

a couple seconds later

by the same photographer

but it wasn't just a cropped version of the other photo.

I did not realize that at the time

and I had never done, you know, an overlay

or a comparison.

Why does it matter so much which specific photo?

Because if you look here,

there's the photo upon which it was based,

and the other one with George Clooney in it.

You know, what's the big difference?

It looks almost identical.

It really does and some copyright lawyers

would argue it really doesn't matter

which photo Fairey used,

but The Associated Press says it matters a lot.

Bad news atmospherically for Fairey.

Yeah.

Dealing with the case in Boston

was incredibly stressful.

I was barely keeping it together.

I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown from that.

And then, to add the AP lawsuit on top of that

and then realizing I'd made a mistake about the image,

so what I did was I made things way worse for myself

by just not saying anything about it

and sticking to my original story

that, "Oh, you know, it was based on the cropping

of that photograph."

I didn't acknowledge to my lawyers,

I didn't acknowledge to Amanda,

I didn't acknowledge to anyone that I'd been mistaken

and that I didn't even realize there were two photos.

The other thing is I just felt stupid,

so I tried to just keep that a secret

and I deleted files on my computer.

I remember the day he told me,

he said to me, he said, you know,

"I need to talk to you,"

and it was such a weird "I need to talk to you"

that I thought, "You're either dying,

you've had an affair."

And he said, "You gotta sit down."

So I'm like, "No, no, I'm not sitting down.

What, tell me while I'm standing up."

Like, seriously.

I'm like, "I am not sitting down."

And he tells me, he goes on to tell me what happened.

And then later on when I realized there was no--

if I went into a deposition,

I would have to lie under oath,

then I came forward to my attorneys.

I was like, "Why the hell did you do that?

Why did you do that?"

It was irrelevant as to which photo it was."

And he said, "It's because I swore it was the other photo."

Anything that could be used against me,

to me, was, you know, very threatening,

not just in terms of a lawsuit

about potentially money,

but about my freedom.

Simple as that.

So it was heartbreaking for me

because I knew that he didn't need to do that.

But he was not well from that.

He was upset.

You know, it's the first time that I felt so overwhelmed

that I did something really cowardly.

I just did everything I could to avoid dealing with it.

And me, I'm just sitting there like,

"If you would have just told me,

if you would have just told me that this--

that this came up,

I could have...

I could have gotten you through that."

That was one of the roughest points,

I think, in our relationship together.

But I would have never let him go down that road.

There's just no way.

Like, I would have, like, thrown him under the bus

to save him.

Where we went from there was that,

"You gotta come clean.

You gotta talk to the lawyers about it."

The conversation with my attorneys

was, I could tell, very frustrating for them

and, of course, it was very emotional for me.

They just said, "Why didn't you tell us sooner?

The merits of your case were strong either photo,

it didn't matter which photo you worked from.

You would have probably won the case either way.

But now what you've done is you've cast the entire case

in a bad light

because you look like a bad person,

and that is going to taint the proceeding.

We can't move forward with you,

we have to drop you as a client."

A Los Angeles-based artist, Shepard Fairey,

has acknowledged that an Associated Press photo,

seen here on the left,

was the basis for his image of Obama on the right.

Mr. Fairey pleaded guilty

in a New York federal court yesterday

to destroying and fabricating documents

during a legal battle with The Associated Press.

Fairey could face six months in prison.

He's gonna be sentenced coming up in July.

Once I heard the facts of the dispute,

it seemed to me an opportunity

to clarify the appropriate latitude

that appropriation artists should enjoy

when making use of copyrighted materials,

in particular copyrighted photographs.

So I initially got involved in the case

out of a matter of principle.

I believe in the principle of fair use

and for artists to have the right to create

new images that are transformative

based on preexisting images.

It's been part of art-making

since art-making started.

My message to any artist

is if you wanna use something,

and you think you want to use it to promote your work,

great.

Have the respect

towards your professional colleague

to ask.

That's it.

That photo, without what Shepard did to it,

was not iconic,

by anyone's stretch of the imagination.

He made it iconic, okay?

You have to give the artist some credit for that.

Now if he went to go sell t-shirts from it,

and it was like a movie star,

that's a situation that has to be

dealt with financially for the photographer

no matter how dime-a-dozen the photograph is.

But the freedom to use an image of a political figure

in order to express an idea or to protest something,

that makes a big difference.

There was probably a line of photographers up front

snapping pictures all with long lenses,

very impersonal.

Hello!

Freedom of speech is a really important thing in this country

and Shepard saw something in that particular photograph

and thought, "This could be something."

Fairey says he didn't violate copyright laws

because his use of the image

should be considered fair use under the law.

The AP alleges that Fairey's image directly copies

all the striking elements of the photo

and adds nothing substantial to it.

News gathering itself

really would be under threat

if anybody could copy whatever they liked

and make whatever use they pleased of it

without paying.

The Associated Press was demanding an amount of money

that would have bankrupted Shepard.

Considering that to license a photograph

is, at the very most, a few thousand dollars

and they were asking for millions of dollars.

The AP wanted to make a very serious case,

precedent, that you steal or you take from the AP

and the long arms of the AP will come back to get you.

The Associated Press is wealthy

and well-represented by lawyers.

So they have the resources to press hard

over a long period of time,

which Shepard did not.

Shepard and Amanda were being drained.

It was a dark time for me.

It was very, very, very stressful and depressing.

I could just see this, like, overwhelming cloud over him.

However, we have children

and he's a wonderful father

and he really, you know,

he was still there,

he was still Dad.

The girls are number one.

If anything, I almost felt like he felt more at peace

just being with them.

Madeline was one year old.

Vivienne was three.

Amanda was really stressed out

just being a mom and dealing with all of it.

It would have been very different

if it were just me.

This is tape number one, volume five

of the videotape deposition of Mr. Shepard Fairey.

That was one of the most stressful things for me

was having to go through that

because in a deposition,

if you don't give them the answer that they want,

they then ask it five more times

in a slightly different way

and they tried to make it seem like

there were malicious aspects to everything

and there really wasn't.

Um...

I thought I did, yes.

The Associated Press were brutal on him.

They were absolutely brutal.

They were going to crucify him

at a level that I really didn't understand.

(clears throat)

Have you had a chance to look at the transcript?

Yes, I did.

Where in there do you tell Ms. Gross

it was wrong for Mr. Fairey to use your photograph?

I didn't say that.

Okay, let's take a break.

It was time to take a break for lunch

and I said, "Hey, hey, Shepard,

do you wanna go get some lunch?"

And the suits were just totally freaking out.

We looked at our lawyers and we said,

"We are going to lunch, see you later."

When I had lunch with Mannie Garcia,

I explained to him that, "I respect photographers,

I collaborate with photographers all the time.

I also side with people who feel like they're,

you know, under the boot of a corporation.

And I think that you and I

are definitely more like each other

than we are like the people from the AP."

Shepard extended his hand to me

and he apologized.

And he said, "I should have contacted you earlier,

but I apologize.

I want to make it right."

I think as he got to know me a little more and understand

that I was never doing it for personal gain,

that even getting recognition out of it

was not something I expected or was going for,

and, you know, we bonded over the stress

that we'd both gone through.

Well, we were just about to hash it out in court

and I swear, the AP was like,

"Oh, we wanna settle."

The Associated Press should have,

and probably was, worried

because this is the kind of case

that, particularly if decided on appeal,

would disadvantage them in negotiations

with artists of all sorts.

So from their standpoint,

getting a significant sum of money from Shepard

and not getting a final judgment

was the goal.

Shep made agreements with the AP,

the AP had to make agreements and settlements with me,

and so it took a while

and it was painful.

I asked my lawyers,

"How much money do you think went into this

before we got to this point

where it's I can go in my direction,

Shep goes in his direction,

and the AP goes in their direction?"

And they estimated it somewhere around $15 million.

And most of that money was spent by The Associated Press.

Lawyers.

Lawyers.

It never got to the point

where it went to court

where a judge could make a decision

on whether it was fair use or not.

Had the case proceeded all the way through to the end,

I'm quite confident Shepard would have won.

You may never recognize me on the street,

you might recognize Shepard Fairey.

But I'm the guy that made the image

that this guy made the poster

to elect the first black president.

And, uh, it's still cool.

I'm still good with it.

I don't have any issues.

It was humiliating.

It was something I was really, really ashamed of.

and it's, you know, who knows how long it'll be,

you know, an albatross around my neck

as far as public perception goes,

but it's gonna be something that is gonna haunt me forever.

When that all was finally over,

I moved on the way I almost always move on

from things that are stressful,

I just do more work.

Work's good therapy for me.

I had seen one of the museum shows

and was very impressed by the portraits.

They were way beyond what we knew

from the Obama portrait,

and I thought that Shepard Fairey

is one of the most original, insightful

portrait artists alive today.

I'd been asked by Jeffrey Deitch,

who was the gallerist that I most looked up to

and admired for his program at his gallery,

Deitch Projects in New York,

to do a show.

I proposed a particular theme to him:

a portrait of America.

Portraits of underground heroes

and some of our political heroes.

Having a show to work toward

gave me something to really put my energy into.

All of my frustrations about things going on

socially and politically

and just my own frustration with myself.

It took at least a year to create

this phenomenal gallery of portraits.

This was the show that I eventually decided

to title "May Day."

I had a lot of fears that showing at Deitch Projects,

which is a gallery that is taken very seriously

by the art world,

that it would be a little bit out of my comfort zone.

I knew that there would be a lot of people hoping

that I would not make a strong show

so they could say that all the hype around the "Hope" poster

had been a one-hit wonder,

that I was not to be taken seriously as an artist.

And I felt a lot of pressure to prove otherwise.

The morning of the opening,

they began lining up very-- like seven in the morning,

and then when we opened the full show,

there were so many people there

the street was basically shut down.

You know, I'm very, very fortunate

my artwork's known to a lot of people.

I have a successful art career,

I have a successful clothing line

which has been, you know, an amazing source of income

for me to do things that I never could have done otherwise.

Now, I have the kind of resources

to put money into things that I care about.

People don't know that he does a lot of the stuff for free.

Marriage equality,

Citizens United,

money in politics,

the criminal justice system and mass incarceration,

climate change.

It was easy for me when I was younger,

and I'm just doing a few stickers and stencils,

to say, "This is really good for what it is."

But when you get to the scale of the Eiffel Tower,

you better make it count.

The Paris Climate Conference

unites leaders, government officials,

scientists, and influential speakers

from around the world

to promote global action for addressing climate change.

This will mean establishing what individual countries

will do to control greenhouse gas emissions

and providing financial support where needed.

I created a globe that was suspended

between the first and second tiers of the tower.

You could see a mandala from beneath,

you could see floral imagery,

and then woven in were different images

about the environment,

some championing green energy

and some cautioning our reliance on fossil fuels.

What I found out was that no artist

had ever done a three-dimensional installation

at the Eiffel Tower.

I'm the first artist in history to do it.

That's really incredible for me.

To have the entertainment value

and the spectacle

and serious content

all come together, that's rare.

It was something that I was proud of aesthetically.

It said what I wanted to say

and it was getting attention

in a really amazing place.

I think the idea that art can become a symbol

or a starting point for conversation is--

you know, that's exciting,

and sure, there are a number of people

who care about policy that were probably gonna be

engaged in the climate change conversation anyway...

Thank you.

Thank you, sir, all right.

...but if the art lured some people

that wouldn't have been into that conversation,

that's very valuable to me.

And we have our first projections of the night.

Take a look at this.

Donald Trump, folks,

we project, will win in Kentucky.

He's gonna have to win someplace

we didn't think he was gonna win.

Donald Trump will win the state of Ohio, a big one here.

This is a dramatic, very stunning event.

Donald Trump has won the state of Pennsylvania.

Donald Trump will win the state of Florida.

The most surreal election we have ever seen.

(crowd chanting "USA!")

My need to make my work topical,

it comes from everything that I've been into in my life

that's made my life feel meaningful.

Now I'm trying to find ways to take a lot of my frustrations

and my impulses and channel them in a constructive way.

And using my art to say something

is the most constructive way I can think of.

We want to take you to D. C.

We have been monitoring the Women's March

coming out of Washington.

It's expected to be the biggest

inauguration protest in U. S. history.

We're starting to see the groups gather,

they're getting a little bit bigger.

And if you think it's a phenomenon

that's mostly confined to Washington,

take a look at this.

Marchers spread across the country.

Well, that chilly, windy weather

not keeping an estimated 20,000 people

from the Women's March.

The city was preparing for about 200,000 marchers.

By early this morning,

estimate had more than doubled to at least a half a million.

Women-led marches took place in over 600 locations

spread across seven continents.

(cheering)

I definitely consider myself an artist

before an activist.

Because if you call yourself an activist,

you're never doing enough.

For an artist, I do a lot.

I will outlast anybody.

I've outlasted generations of haters.

I mean, they come and go.

You know, I think that

we only have so much time on the Earth

and I'm not gonna waste a second of it.