Controversial Shepard Fairey Mural Painted Over

Shepard Fairey, of the Obama Hope poster and Andre the Giant Has a Posse meme fame, was recently commissioned to do a mural in Covington, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from my hometown of Cincinnati. Michael Claypool, the building owner, offered his wall to the Covington audio-visual company MAC productions, he didn’t know what the mural would look like or concern. When Fairey installed a mural depicting a child soldier in Asia holding an automatic rifle, neighbors and Clayton’s clients complained.

…[T]he mural at 242 W. Pike St. – which Fairey and his team of artists spent several hours pasting up in sections on Tuesday – drew negative reactions from Claypool and some of his clients and neighbors, including John G. Carlisle Elementary School across the street.

The mural was painted white last Thursday.

Despite accusations of plagiarism, I’m still of fan of Fairey and have been since I was in high school and printed my own Andre the Giant stickers. I like his graphical style and appreciate his ability to push political topics in his art. Still, I sympathize with the building owner, who probably was looking to beautiful the neighborhood, and instead stirred up a hornet’s nest.

Luckily this wasn’t the only Fairey mural in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area. There are several others, including this one at an Art Academy building on the corner of East 12th and Walnut streets in Over-the-Rhine.

Link the the article in the Cincinnati Enquirer, which includes the sources for the images above.

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