Shep­ard Fairey’s famous 2008 Oba­ma “Hope” poster has been the source of count­less imi­ta­tions and par­o­dies. Last week Fairey released his own par­o­dy for Occu­py Wall Street, replac­ing Oba­ma’s head with a hood­ed fig­ure in a Guy Fawkes mask, along with the words, “Mis­ter Pres­i­dent, We HOPE You’re On Our Side.” As Fairey explained on his web­site, “I see Oba­ma as a poten­tial ally of the Occu­py move­ment if the ener­gy of the move­ment is per­ceived as con­struc­tive, not destruc­tive.”

Not every­one agreed. Yes­ter­day, after a series of dis­cus­sions with one of the orga­niz­ers of the pur­port­ed­ly lead­er­less move­ment, Fairey announced he was back­ing down and drop­ping the provoca­tive mes­sage to the pres­i­dent and replac­ing it with “We Are The HOPE.” A few of the move­men­t’s orga­niz­ers report­ed­ly thought Fairey’s poster implied that Occu­py Wall Street either sup­port­ed Oba­ma or was beg­ging for his sup­port.

“As Oba­ma has raised more mon­ey from Wall Street than any oth­er can­di­date in his­to­ry, it would make us naive hyp­ocrites to sup­port him under present cir­cum­stances,” the anony­mous orga­niz­er wrote to Fairey. “As for the design, the fact that you put the 99% inside the Oba­ma O is cross­ing a sacred line. While it def­i­nite­ly looks cool, whether intend­ed or not, this sends a clear mes­sage that Oba­ma is co-opt­ing OWS.”

“I have no inter­est in pan­der­ing to Oba­ma,” respond­ed Fairey. “I see my image as a reminder to him that he has alien­at­ed his pop­ulist pro­gres­sive sup­port­ers.”

But Fairey sub­mit­ted to the pres­sure and changed his design any­way. You can read more about the exchange here, and see the altered ver­sion of Fairey’s poster below.

For more Occu­py Wall Street posters, stay tuned for our post com­ing lat­er today.…

Los Ange­les has long been known as the street mur­al cap­i­tal of the world. But in the past few years the city has paint­ed over more than 300 murals, accord­ing to the Los Ange­les Times, enforc­ing a decade-old ordi­nance that makes it a crime to cre­ate murals on most pri­vate prop­er­ties. “The mur­al cap­i­tal of the world is no more,” street artist Saber told the Times. “They buff beau­ti­ful pieces, harass prop­er­ty own­ers and threat­en us like we are in street gangs.”

Some of the prob­lems start­ed in 1986, when the city was look­ing for a way to alle­vi­ate the grow­ing scourge of bill­board blight. The city was being blan­ket­ed with unsight­ly com­mer­cial adver­tis­ing, so the Los Ange­les City Coun­cil adopt­ed a code to reduce com­mer­cial bill­boards. The new restric­tions exempt­ed art­work. Adver­tis­ers respond­ed by suing the city, argu­ing that they had the same right of free speech as the mural­ists. So in 2002 the Coun­cil “solved” the mat­ter by amend­ing the code to include works of art. “The law left many murals tech­ni­cal­ly ille­gal,” wrote the Times in an Oct. 29 edi­to­r­i­al, “no mat­ter how tal­ent­ed the artist or how will­ing the own­er of the wall or how inof­fen­sive the sub­ject mat­ter.”

Since then, murals that were already in exis­tence have come under increas­ing threat from two sides: from graf­fi­ti “artists” who mark their ter­ri­to­ry by defac­ing murals, and from a city that seems deter­mined to find any pre­text to paint over them. This is the sub­ject of Behind the Wall: The Bat­tle for LA’s Murals (above), a six-minute doc­u­men­tary by stu­dents in the Film and TV Pro­duc­tion MFA pro­gram at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. It was direct­ed by Oliv­er Riley-Smith, shot by Qian­bai­hui Yang, and pro­duced and edit­ed by Gavin Gar­ri­son.

With­out address­ing the issue head-on, the film makes some progress toward illu­mi­nat­ing the dis­tinc­tion between street art and van­dal­ism. Mural­ists like Ernesto De La Loza, who is fea­tured in the film, receive per­mis­sion from prop­er­ty own­ers and then spend months cre­at­ing their art. Lat­er, some­one comes along with a can of spray paint and tags it. Should the mural­ist and the graf­fi­ti artist have equal cul­tur­al sta­tus?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Always Bank­able Banksy

Pep­per spray stu­dents in the face on Fri­day, and you wake up the face of evil on Sat­ur­day. Then, the brunt of some clever jokes on Mon­day. Look! There’s Lieu­tenant John Pike pop­ping into the famous paint­ing, The Spir­it of ’76, and mac­ing a wound­ed sol­dier while he’s down. That’s low.

Now the sym­bol of French free­dom, Delacroix’s Lib­er­ty Lead­ing the Peo­ple. Is Pike using pep­per spray? Or, on clos­er inspec­tion, is that a shot of deodor­ant? Quel con ce mec.

Free­dom from Want is part of Nor­man Rock­well’s Four Free­doms series of paint­ings. And guess who is ruin­ing free­dom, Thanks­giv­ing and every­thing whole­some?

Yes, he even­tu­al­ly des­e­crates Picas­so’s anti-war mur­al, Guer­ni­ca, too.

A baby seal? WTF Pike?!!

More art his­to­ry fun awaits you at the Pep­per­Spray­ing­Cop Tum­blr site.

H/T Heather and Wash­Po