Shepard Fairey Threatens to Sue Artist For Parodying His Work

Shepard Fairey recently sent a cease and desist letter to self proclaimed "Propaganda Re-Engineer" Baxter Orr. The 26 year old based out of Austin, Texas has been parodying some of Fairey's work, including the well known Andre The Giant image, and allegedly has been reselling prints of Fairey's work on Ebay. The threat has kicked up a lot of discussion over Fairey's artwork and his right to be calling someone out on copyright infringement.



"I'm pursuing this out of principal. I have principals and Orr does not. A gross over-simplification of the situation could lead a lazy person to think that I'm a hypocrite for pursuing Orr because, in basic terms, we both use reinterpreted appropriated imagery. The key difference is in our motivations and my willingness to take responsibility for the things I do."

"Baxter maintains that Shepard's always been a big inspiration, and that his recreations are not malicious, but rather ironic, "I wanted to parody the guy who parodies everything. He's based his career off this. If he gets mad at this, he's become just like Tide detergent or Coca-Cola."

(Resource: www.animalnewyork.com)

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