The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Shepard Fairey · one image of early 2008, scored as one work in its printed editions: signed screenprints, offset posters printed and given away in very large numbers, stickers and the campaign’s own sanctioned version · a head-and-shoulders portrait of Barack Obama in four flat tones, red, pale buff, light blue and dark blue, with one word in capitals on a band at the foot · the state scored carries the word HOPE; the first street edition carried PROGRESS, and later printings CHANGE and VOTE, states of the one image · drawn from an Associated Press photograph by Mannie Garcia of April 2006 · the hand-finished stencil collage from which the poster was drawn, in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, since 2009, is context · no single print is the work
Mode
Street-art stencil portrait in the idiom of the propaganda poster, made unofficially for a campaign and then adopted by it
Mythos
The leader as the one who sees the future, the upward gaze and side light of the visionary, built; the nation’s colours made into a face
Phase
Early 2008, during the contest for the Democratic nomination; the same image under four words, PROGRESS first, HOPE the state that stood
Presentation
Screenprint and offset lithograph on paper, in editions; stickers; digital circulation; four flat tones and one word in a heavy sans-serif
Register
Uplift, ceremonial and clean; one designed lift, made for a glance and a wall
Scale
One head and one word; a poster for every wall and a sticker for every surface
Governing Proposition
Early in 2008, unasked, a street artist took a news photograph of a senator listening at a panel and reduced it to four flat tones: the shadow side dark blue, the lit side red, the light itself a pale buff, the field behind a light blue. He turned nothing; the photograph already looked up and away. Under the face he set one word in heavy capitals and gave the image away by the street method of the free multiple, until the campaign it served adopted it. The wager of the image is that the oldest pose of political and religious imagery, the leader looking at a light the viewer cannot see, could be given to this man, and that the nation’s colours could be made his flesh.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Shepard Fairey, born in 1970, the street artist of the OBEY Giant campaign, made the image early in 2008, independently and in support of Barack Obama’s campaign for the Democratic nomination. The campaign then adopted it. It is a head-and-shoulders portrait, the head turned three-quarters and gazing upward and off the frame, reduced to four flat tones, red, a pale buff, a light blue and a dark blue, with no modelling except at the boundaries between them. Across the foot, on a band, stands one word in capitals in a heavy sans-serif.
The first street edition carried the word PROGRESS. The state that became the campaign’s and the culture’s carries HOPE, and later printings carried CHANGE and VOTE. These are states of one image, and they are scored as one work: the word is the only part that moves. The image passed as signed screenprints, as offset posters printed and given away in very large numbers, as stickers, and as the campaign’s own sanctioned version. The editions are scored as one, and no single print is the work.
The image was drawn from a hand-finished stencil collage, its original and the evidence of its making, which the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, acquired in 2009. The collage is context and is not scored. Behind it stands a news photograph, taken by Mannie Garcia for the Associated Press in April 2006 at the National Press Club in Washington. The work that did what this work did is the printed and circulated image, and it is that image which stands now, whole, in very many prints.
Movement II
As the photograph it came from, the picture is a senator listening at a panel. Reduced to four flat tones, it is an icon. The stencil takes away everything contingent, the moment, the room, the actual colour of the skin, and leaves the type. The dark blue lies in the shadow, the red on the side in light, the buff is the light itself, and the light blue fills the field. The face reads as lit by the flag, and the flag, with buff in the place of white, has been reduced to a skin tone and a light. The person and the nation are made of one stuff. That is the form doing the thinking, and it is a known form, applied rather than invented.
The reduction is hard to do well. A face must stay recognisable in four tones, and here it does: the shadow shapes under the brow, the ear and the jaw do all the modelling there is. The buff keeps the image warm and keeps it from a flag’s white; the heavy capitals close the foot. The image prints well at any size, on a wall, on a sticker or on a screen, and that too is a decision of craft, since a work meant for every surface has to survive cheap printing. What holds the making where it stands is that the drawing follows its photograph closely, the method is the maker’s routine one, and the range is one picture.
One law governs the whole. The face, the most particular thing in the image, and the word, the most general, are made of the same tones, the word standing on a band of the same colours, so that the person and the slogan are one material. The field behind the head is built of those tones, and no line or tone escapes them. The law reaches even into the editions, since the image was made to survive every kind of reproduction without breaking. The Inner Law stands at 7.8, second of the twelve: a law held completely, over one face, one word and four colours.
Movement III
The man in the image looks past the viewer, up and to the side, at something not yet in the frame. Take the gaze away and the image is a portrait; with it, the look is what the word names. The subtractive test runs on a very small set and every part bears load: without the word, a stylised head; without the red and blue, no claim on the national colours; without the flatness, a photograph of a candidate again. What yields is the word itself, which changed from PROGRESS to HOPE without the picture changing, and the detail of the boundaries between tones, which could be drawn many ways.
The pose is the oldest in political and religious imagery: the leader as the one who sees the future, lit from one side by a light the viewer does not see. It is the gaze of the Soviet and Chinese posters, of Jim Fitzpatrick’s Che of 1968, and of the saints in their altarpieces, and in this image it is built, not alluded to; without it there is no emblem. The particular stays particular, one man, recognisably. But the myth is borrowed whole and deployed, not discovered or deepened, and The Archetypal Deep stands at 7.4.
The lift is real and single. On a wall at poster size, among other posters, the raised face and the red and blue against the buff light have a clean, ceremonial force, and the graphic economy is handsome. The effect is designed for a glance and a mood; it was multiplied across cities rather than renewed within the picture, and it does not deepen on looking. The Sublime stands at 6.6. Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of the same man, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery and standing at 7.3, seats him in an armchair before a wall of leaves, looking directly out; this image gives him the visionary’s gaze, past the viewer, and the two stand level.
Movement IV
The inheritance is open and acknowledged: the Constructivist and Soviet poster, the American poster of the WPA and the war, Fitzpatrick’s Che, Warhol’s silkscreened leaders, and the maker’s own street campaign of stickers and paste-ups, run since 1989. The turn is of use. The outlaw idiom of the street, with its debt to propaganda, was given to a mainstream presidential candidate, at his side and without his leave, and given away by the street method of the free multiple, ahead of and outside the campaign it served, until the campaign took it up. The stake was modest: the style was proven, and the risk was being ignored. The Swerve stands at 7.0.
What the picture made visible is a condition of the country in 2008. It showed a Black American candidate in the visual language of the heroic leader, the revolutionary and the national icon, and showed that this language fitted him without strain and could be taken up by millions as their own, before the election showed the same. It showed too that persuasion had moved to the street, the sticker and the shared file. But the image is persuasion, not inquiry. Its content is a mood attached to a person, and it examines nothing of what the person or the moment held. The Unconcealment stands at 7.0.
The reach is very wide. The image became the picture of the 2008 campaign and one of the defining American images of its decade; its manner became a template applied to any face, taken up by later campaigns and movements of every side and by its maker for later causes, and parodied without end; it carried street art into the National Portrait Gallery. The force under that reach is modest, a restatement of an idiom a century old. Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, the ancestor in the silkscreened multiple, stands at 7.8 and holds Pressure on Tradition at 9.0; this image holds it at 7.5, having redirected a genre of political illustration rather than what art could do.
Movement V
The photograph behind the image was Mannie Garcia’s, for the Associated Press. The agency sued in 2009, and the civil case was settled in 2011. Fairey admitted to destroying and fabricating evidence about which photograph he had used, and in 2012 pleaded guilty to a criminal contempt charge. The case put the image into law reviews and classrooms, as a test of the line between transformation and copying. It bears on the work’s history and on the discourse around it, not on what the image is; the drawing’s closeness to its source is charged where it belongs, on The Made.
Eighteen years on, the image is whole, in very many prints and in the collage in the National Portrait Gallery, and its presence has been continuous and about as wide as that of any image of its decade. The Imperishable stands highest of the twelve, at 8.2, and stands below the usual figure for its span by the rubric’s charge for a surface fixed to its moment: a poster for one election, whose word was a slogan, which has outlived the hope it named as the document of it. Return to the image itself yields little, since it was built to be read at once; most of the return is to its history, and The Bottomless Well stands at 6.6.
It holds few orders: the state and the nation, history in the person, a public in the street and the multiple, and one recognisable face. The family, labour, nature and any world around the man are absent; the form, a head and a word, describes The Encompassed at 6.3. This is what holds the image below Tier IV: its form and its coherence clear their floors, its survival is sound, but its disclosure is of a wish, its myth borrowed, its turn one of use and its lift a single designed effect. It stands at 7.3, above Banksy’s Girl with Balloon (7.0), the nearest in kind, and below Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych (8.4) and Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (8.6), the icon of a public figure and the political emblem at full strength.
Act III · The Twelve
Run the subtractive test on a very small set. Take away the upward gaze and the image is a portrait; with it, the man looks past the viewer toward something not yet in the frame, and that look is what the word names. Take away the word and it is a stylised head, legible as Fairey’s but not as an argument. Take away the red and blue and it loses its claim on the national colours; take away the flatness and it is a photograph again, a candidate rather than an emblem. Each part bears load. What yields is the word itself, carried as PROGRESS and as HOPE without the picture changing, and the detail of the tone boundaries. The necessity is real and shallow: the argument it serves is a slogan.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Disclosure through image is credited fully, so the question is what the picture made visible. It shows a Black American candidate in the visual language that had served the heroic leader, the revolutionary and the national icon, and shows that this language could fit him without strain and be taken up by millions as their own. In 2008 that was a fact about the country, and the picture made it visible before the election did. It shows too that political persuasion had moved to the street, the sticker and the shared file, outside the campaign it served. What holds the axis is that the work is persuasion, not inquiry: its content is a mood, hope, attached to a person, and it discloses nothing of what the person or the moment held beyond the wish.
Score: 7.0 / 10
The register is uplift, and it is achieved once, by one device: the face lifted and lit from the side, gazing up and away, the pose of the visionary the poster inherits from the propaganda print and the saint’s picture. On a wall at poster size, among others, there is a lift; the graphic economy is handsome, and the red and blue against the buff light have a clean, ceremonial force. But the elevation is designed for a glance and a mood, and it does not deepen on looking. Height is moderate and frequency is one: a single effect, multiplied across a city rather than renewed within the image. Beauty is present as graphic finish more than as anything that holds the eye. A poster’s sublime is a lift, not transport, and the axis stands with The Bottomless Well a step above the lowest.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Here the image builds more than it evokes. The archetype is the leader as the one who sees the future: the upward, off-frame gaze of the Soviet and Chinese posters, of Jim Fitzpatrick’s Che of 1968 and of the saints in their altarpieces, the face lit from one side by a light the viewer does not see. That structure bears the load; it is what turns a senator’s photograph into an emblem. The national myth is built in the colours, red and blue, with the buff in the place of white, the flag reduced to a skin tone and a light. And the particular stays particular: one man, recognisably. What holds the axis is that the myth is borrowed whole and deployed rather than discovered, and the image adds to it only its subject.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The inheritance is plain and the maker has never hidden it: the Constructivist and Soviet poster, the American poster of the WPA and the war, Fitzpatrick’s Che, Warhol’s silkscreened leaders, and Fairey’s own OBEY Giant, the street campaign of stickers and paste-ups he had run since 1989. The departure is to take the outlaw idiom of the street, with its debt to propaganda, and turn it to a mainstream presidential candidate, unofficially and without his leave, and to distribute it by the free multiple until the campaign adopted it. That is a real turn of use. The stake was modest: the style was the maker’s proven one, he had a following and a commercial practice, and the risk was being ignored. The legal stake was real, but it was taken unawares, not wagered.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Would another form change what the work knows? Largely. As the photograph it was drawn from, it is a news picture of a senator listening at a panel; reduced to four flat tones, it is an icon, because the stencil removes the contingent, the moment, the setting and the skin’s actual colour, and leaves the type. The palette replaces flesh with the national colours, so the person and the nation are made of one stuff: that is the form doing the thinking. The multiple is part of the form, since a work meant for every wall is made in a manner that survives cheap printing, small size and a sticker. Held where it is because the form is a known one, applied rather than invented, and what it knows can be stated in the word at its foot.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Eighteen years, so the evidence is partial. The questions it has sustained are real: fair use and the line between transformation and copying, which the suit over the photograph carried into law reviews and classrooms; the relation of street art, propaganda and a democratic campaign; the candidate as a brand; and the irony of an icon whose hope its subject could not meet, which its maker has himself discussed. Return to the image yields little. The gaze, the tones and the word are read at once, and the picture was built to be read at once. Most of the return is to its history, its lawsuit and its afterlife as a template, not to anything found anew in it. With The Sublime, a step above the lowest of the twelve.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Published, so intrinsic force and reach are judged together, in the field of American political graphics and street art of the 2000s. Intrinsic force is modest: the idiom was established, and the image restates the propaganda portrait in a street artist’s hand with great economy; it reorganises a use more than a possibility. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it became the image of the 2008 campaign and one of the defining American images of its decade; its manner became a template, applied to any face, taken up by later campaigns and movements of every side and by its maker for later causes, and parodied without end; and it carried street art into the National Portrait Gallery and the mainstream of political design. It redirected a genre of illustration, not the art of its decade.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at eighteen years. Form: whole. The image exists in very many prints and in the collage from which it was drawn, held in a national collection; no single loss could take it. Presence: continuous and about as wide as any image of its decade, through the campaign, the Portrait Gallery, the lawsuit, the template and the parodies; fame is presence, not proof. Fabric: offset prints fade and stickers perish, but the editions and the collage carry the image. The charge that holds it below the usual figure for its span is the rubric’s own, a surface fixed to its moment: a campaign poster for one election, its word a slogan, which has outlived the hope it named only as the document of it.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Read to the same anchors as every medium: command of the stencil portrait and the printed poster. Credited: the reduction itself, which is hard to do well, a face made legible and recognisable in four tones, the shadow shapes under the brow, the ear and the jaw doing the work of modelling; the placing of the tones, dark blue for shadow and red for the side in light, so that the face reads as lit by the flag; the buff of the light, which keeps the image warm and keeps it from a flag’s white; the heavy capitals at the foot. It prints well at any size, and that is a decision of craft. What holds the axis: the drawing follows a photograph closely, the method is the maker’s routine one, and the range is one picture.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the face, the most particular thing in the image, and the word, the most general. They obey one law. The face is reduced to four tones, and the word stands in the same tones on a band of the same colours; the person and the slogan are made of one stuff, which is the image’s argument. The law extends to the field behind the head, built of the same tones, and nothing is drawn outside it: no line or tone escapes. It extends even to the editions, since the image was built to survive every form of cheap reproduction without breaking. Held where it is because narrowness is not coherence: the law governs one face, one word and four colours, and the range it spans is small.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The orders held are few, and held in one gesture. The state and the nation, in the candidate and the colours. History, in the person: a Black American figured as the national leader, which the image carries without stating. Politics as a public, in the street and the multiple: the image was made for the many and carried by them. The individual, in a recognisable face. Commerce and the law enter the work’s life, through the editions and the lawsuit, but not the image. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what is absent: the family, labour, nature, the sacred except as the borrowed pose of the visionary, any world around the man. The form, a head and a word, describes the figure, which clears its own floor.
Score: 6.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.3 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.2, then The Inner Law at 7.8, then The Inevitable, The Living Form and The Made at 7.6. An image whole in very many prints and in the collage held in a national collection, its presence continuous for eighteen years though its surface is fixed to one election; one law of four tones under which a face and a slogan are made of one stuff; a small set of parts each of which bears load; a stencil that turns a news photograph into an icon by removing the contingent; and a reduction that keeps a face recognisable in four tones and prints at any size.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.3: the state, history in the person, a public and one face, held in one gesture, with the family, labour, nature and the world around the man absent. Next above it, The Sublime and The Bottomless Well at 6.6: a single designed lift that does not deepen on looking, and an image read at once, whose return is to its history more than to itself. Then The Unconcealment and The Swerve at 7.0: a condition of the country shown through a wish, and a turn of use on a proven path at a modest stake.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.6 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.6, The Made at 7.6, The Inner Law at 7.8, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Imperishable at 8.2, Pressure on Tradition at 7.5, The Archetypal Deep at 7.4, The Unconcealment at 7.0 and The Swerve at 7.0 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Unconcealment, 7.0, The Sublime, 6.6, The Archetypal Deep, 7.4, The Swerve, 7.0, and The Bottomless Well, 6.6, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.3. Three of the five summit conditions are met, the Necessity Cap, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The twelve sum to 87.2, an average of 7.27 that displays 7.3. The work stands where its aggregate places it: in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the image and of its documented making, circulation and litigation, not from a print in hand; no image or written source was consulted. The work scored is the image of early 2008 as a poster, in its printed editions: signed screenprints, offset posters, stickers and the campaign’s sanctioned version, scored as one, with no single print the work. The state scored carries the word HOPE; the first street edition carried PROGRESS, and later printings CHANGE and VOTE, states of the one image in which only the word moves. What stands now is the image whole in very many prints; offset prints fade and stickers perish, and nothing has been lost that carries the image. The hand-finished stencil collage from which the poster was drawn, acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, in 2009, is the original of the image and the evidence of its making, and is context, not the unit. The source photograph, taken by Mannie Garcia for the Associated Press in April 2006 at the National Press Club in Washington, is context; the agency’s suit of 2009, settled in 2011, and the maker’s plea of 2012 are stated as record. The only words given are those printed on the image. No statement by the maker, by Barack Obama or by any critic is quoted. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the dimensions and exact medium of the collage and the manner of its acquisition, the size of the first edition and the number of posters and stickers distributed, the time the image took to make, the order of the campaign’s approval of the later versions, the sentence imposed in 2012, a mark on the lapel, and the maker’s later magazine cover and the web generator that spread the manner.