Much like Jeff Koons, Shepard Fairey is suffering from art theft and plagiarism. But unlike Koons, Fairey's work consists of reusing past artwork and transforming the image and meaning into something different and more political. Koon's definitely ripped off an artists work for kicks to see how far he could get, but Fairey is more about spreading the word. I guess you could say he too is being unoriginal stealing art and turning it into his own artwork, but I guess it's not as bad because it's considered "street art", high end street art since he's got this whole company and profits from his work. It's ironic reading how one artist criticizes Fairey about plagiarism while he himself copied Roy Lichtenstein and just that whole comic book style movement in general. Andy Warhol copied and created reproductions of products too and wasn't ripped as badly. and he made a lot of money and fame through that. I guess because America is so concerned about copyrights, censorship and all these strict laws to promote individualism that it's harder to use someone else's work as part of your own unless u ask permission and give credit.
In some ways I approve of this because I work hard to create my artwork and wouldn't like someone else claiming it as their own and changing it but when it comes to using other work as reference it makes it hard to know what's stealing from an honest mistake.
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