Artist Shepard Fairey Curates His Favorite YouTube Videos

In a video for MOCA, the “defin­ing muse­um of con­tem­po­rary art” in Los Ange­les, Shep­ard Fairey, the graph­ic design­er and illus­tra­tor best known for the Oba­ma Hope poster of 2008, spent a few min­utes rap­ping about the YouTube videos that have inspired him, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. He starts with one we’ve fea­tured here before  — Saul Bass’ Pitch for the Redesign of Ma Bel­l’s Logo. Read all about that fas­ci­nat­ing 1969 project here.

Next up comes the 1981 music video for Blondie’s “Rap­ture” — momen­tous because it was the first rap video ever aired on MTV and because it fea­tures an appear­ance by graf­fi­ti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who stepped in for Grand­mas­ter Flash when he inex­plic­a­bly went MIA.

Now let’s roll George Clin­ton’s video for “Atom­ic Dog” (1982), an inspi­ra­tion to Fairey because it lay­ers 1980s-video game imagery on top of prison scenes, cre­at­ing a “tem­plate for what a lot of gang­ster rap­pers would embrace lat­er.” Call it the ur-gangs­ta rap video.

Final­ly, Shep­ard refers to videos by The Sex Pis­tols, the Eng­lish punk band formed in 1975. But when it comes to select­ing a par­tic­u­lar clip, he leaves us hang­ing. So, giv­en that curat­ing YouTube videos is our every­day gig, hope you don’t mind if we lay some “God Save the Queen” on you. Enjoy.

via Boing Boing