Brian Thomas Gallagher piles on Fairey today at N+1. Gallagher seems more disturbed by the fact that Fairey makes money from corporate clients than by the fact that he volunteered as a tool for a mainstream American politician. Personally, I find political power scarier than Saks 5th Ave, but it all exposes Fairey's radical pose for what it is. Most importantly, Gallagher is right that Fairey's work is boring. And I liked this bit:
[O]ne fears that in skewering Fairey, one is potentially pinning down who Obama might turn out to be: a mere bundle of associations, linked—inevitably and irretrievably—with movements he did not start, a politics he does not support, and a transformation he cannot possibly represent. In the image, past ideologies and present branding beautifully fuse in a political tableau distant from any actual politics.
Will Wilkinson 