Examining Shepard Fairey's Street
Art Through a Foucauldian
Discourse Analysis: Page 3
Another institution to consider is that of the museum. When considering a museum, the institutional apparatuses are many, among them are: the architecture of the museum, the idea that a museum is for taking in culture and the regulations for accepted behavior set by the museum. Some of the institutional technologies of museums are: the floor layout of the museum (or whether or not there is an order in which the material is intended to be seen), the images which surround the image at hand and the means of enforcement for the museum's rules (security cameras and guards). In the case of Fairey's street art, there is usually only one form of display present in a museum: the original image, from which all others were reproduced, hanging in a frame. Fairey currently has a retrospective of his works on display at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, where most of his works are presented in the manner previously mentioned (Johnson). This presentation form is not only different from the one in which people would normally encounter his street art, but the institution of the museum functions with the help of so many apparatuses and technologies that an image's meaning could be entirely different from the one found in its original presentation form.
Fairey's most recent iconic image is that of Obama Hope, which presents a good situation in which to examine the effect that different institutions can have on an image. The image's success can be attributed to its viral nature similar to that of OBEY and "Andre," but elevated to new levels due to its overwhelming presence on the Internet as well as in its original street environment. Now, the original version of Obama Hope is hanging in the Smithsonian Institute's National Portrait Gallery (facetoface). Refer back to Lynch's idea of the physical environment being a mirror of culture when considering the time in which the image emerged into the national consciousness. Lynch says that he believes there to be a "loosely coupled" relation between environmental and social change, with an exception: The general exception to this lack of connection between radical change in environment and society is an obvious one: wherever a feature of environment is directly linked to an important social role, then the modification of the one will cause the modification of the other. (Lynch 217) This exception accurately describes the condition of the Obama Hope poster. The poster started out as street campaign, being posted wherever possible and because of its presence on the Internet, the image grew in scale and influence and arguably had an effect on the outcome of the presidential election. In addition to this large social change, the image might have also influenced the ways in which people view the medium of street art. With the Obama Hope campaign, it is a logical assumption that the image carried a large amount of residual meaning from the street to the Internet and, because of its iconic status, even to the museum. Also, as the meaning of the poster campaign is spelled out across the bottom of the image (HOPE), wherever the image is displayed its meaning essentially stays the same.
Fairey has created some of the more iconic pieces of street art since the advent of the medium through his utilization of grassroots networks to disseminate his images to all parts of the world and through his embrace of the Internet as a viable display form. The institutions in which it is displayed influence perceptions of Fairey's street art, but when presented in original form in the street environment it seems this is intentional.

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