Shepard Fairey: Detroit police issue arrest warrant for artist
|
Version 0 of 1. Related: Hope dashed: Obama poster artist says president is a disappointment One of the world’s most celebrated street artists, whose Hope poster of Barack Obama became one of the defining images of the 2008 US election, has a warrant out for his arrest on two counts of malicious destruction of property. The Detroit Free Press reports that Shepard Fairey visited the city in May as he had been commissioned to create an 18-storey mural, his largest to date. As well as this official business, the artist pasted four-foot-square posters of his signature images, including his Andre the Giant face, on a number of buildings in the city’s downtown district. The artist had previously said: “I still do stuff on the street without permission. I’ll be doing stuff on the street when I’m in Detroit.” The police say that Fairey tagged around 14 buildings, although they have made contact with only the owners of nine who would consider pressing charges. The police put the price of the damage at just over $9,000. “Just because he is a well-known artist does not take away the fact that he is also a vandal,” police sergeant Rebecca McKay, in charge of the city’s graffiti task force, told the Detroit Free Press. The charges carry a maximum of five years in jail, while Fairey could also be fined over $10,000. The artist has previously been in trouble with the law, arrested more than 15 times for damaging property. He was also sentenced to two years’ probation for tampering with evidence in a legal dispute over his Hope poster. In May, Fairey said that Obama had not lived up to the expectations of 2008, enshrined in his poster: “not even close”. |