Cincinnati Censors Shepard Fairey
The Contemporary Art Center (CAC) in Cincinnati commissioned Shepard Fairey, best known for the Obama Hope poster and the Obey Giant street art campaign, to install several murals on approved walls throughout the city.
One of the murals depicts a police officer with a nightstick and the words, "I'm going to kick your ass and get away with it." Several of the controversial murals have been vandalized and even painted over entirely.
"My art and the images associated with them are meant to create dialogue and help people confront difficult issues and hard truths facing the world," Fairey said in a statement last week. "By covering up the mural, the perpetrator is demonstrating that there are still people in the world who have a fear of artistic and free expression and want to stifle the dialogues I hope to spark with my art."
Read more at cincinnati.com. Thanks Alan and Iwona.
I'm surprised that the city would allow murals like that. They are just now getting over racial tensions that caused riots less than a decade ago.
Yeah, I agree. My guess is that they didn't look at the murals before approving their installation. They just saw that they were going to get artwork from one of the country's most famous artists and said, "go for it." Oops.