Andre the Giant Has a Posse
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Andre the Giant Has a Posse is a street art campaign based on a design by Shepard Fairey created in 1989 while Fairey attended the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. Distributed by the skater community and graffiti artists, the stickers featuring an image of André the Giant began showing up in many cities across the United States.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> At the time, Fairey declared the campaign to be "an experiment in phenomenology".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Over time, the artwork has been reused in a number of ways and has become worldwide. Fairey also altered the work stylistically and semantically into OBEY Giant.<ref name="test">Shepard Fairey, "Supply & Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey", pg. 35.</ref>
History
Fairey and fellow Rhode Island School of Design student Ryan Lesser, along with Blaize Blouin, Alfred Hawkins and Mike Mongo created paper and vinyl stickers and posters with an image of the wrestler André the Giant and the text "ANDRE THE GIANT HAS A POSSE 7′ 4″, 520 lb", ("7′ 4″, 520 lbs"—2.24 m, 236 kg—famously being Andre the Giant's billed height and weight) as an in-joke directed at hip hop and skater subculture, and then began clandestinely and aggressively propagating and posting them in Providence, Rhode Island, and over the rest of the Eastern United States.Template:Citation needed
In an interview with Format magazine in 2008, Fairey said: "The Andre the Giant sticker was just a spontaneous, happy accident. I was teaching a friend how to make stencils in the summer of 1989, and I looked for a picture to use in the newspaper, and there just happened to be an ad for wrestling with André the Giant and I told him that he should make a stencil of it. He said 'Nah, I’m not making a stencil of that, that’s stupid!' but I thought it was funny so I made the stencil and I made a few stickers and the group of guys I was hanging out with always called each other The Posse, so it said Andre the Giant Has a Posse, and it was sort of appropriated from hip-hop slang – Public Enemy, N.W.A and Ice-T were all using the word."<ref>Kobi Annobil, Shepard Fairey, 'Format Magazine', January 21, 2008 Template:Webarchive</ref>
By the early 1990s, tens of thousands of paper and then vinyl stickers were photocopied and hand-silkscreened and put in visible places throughout the world.Template:Citation needed
"Andre the Giant Has a Posse" is also the title of a 1995 documentary short by Helen Stickler, which was the first documentary to feature Shepard Fairey and chronicle his influential street art campaign. The film screened worldwide, most notably in the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. In 2003, Village Voice film critic Ed Halter described the film as: "legendary" and "a canonical study of a Gen-X media manipulation. One of the keenest examinations of '90s underground culture".Template:Citation needed
The threat of a lawsuit from Titan Sports, Inc. in 1994<ref>Shepard Fairey interview in Tattoo Magazine, 1999. Template:Webarchive</ref> spurred Fairey to stop using the trademarked name André the Giant, and to create a more iconic image of the wrestler's face, now most often with the equally iconic branding OBEY. The "OBEY" slogan was not only a parody of propaganda, but also a direct homage to the "OBEY" signs found in the cult film, They Live (1988), starring Roddy Piper. About "OBEY", San Diego Union-Tribune art critic Robert L. Pincus said: "[Fairey's work] was a reaction against earlier political art, since it delivered no clear message. Still, 'Obey' was suggestively antiauthoritarian."<ref>Social ferment not always reflected in fermentation of artworks</ref> "Following the example set by gallery art, some street art is more about the concept than the art," writes The Walrus contributor Nick Mount. "'Fuck Bush' isn’t an aesthetic; it’s an ethic. Shepard Fairey’s Obey Giant stickers and Akay's Akayism posters are clever children of Duchamp, ironic conceptual art."<ref>The Renaissance of Cute, issue 2008.09 Template:Webarchive</ref> OBEY Giant began with a sticker and later expanded to include prints, murals, clothing, and other media.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In the documentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop", directed by Banksy, Fairey can be seen on the streets of Los Angeles in around 2002 putting up sticker art that is very similar in design to the very first Andre the Giant has a Posse stickers that were created.<ref name="April 2018" >Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He is also seen putting up the new OBEY giant image on paste ups including one paste up that is roughly 4 metres by 4 metres in size.<ref name="April 2018" /> At around the same time in 2002 he is also filmed inside a Kinko's on Vine Street in LA creating paste up images of Andre the Giant, alongside Amanda Fairey who is also Shephard's wife.<ref name="April 2018" /> Fairey is also seen on a second occasion inside a building where he is working on images that include the new OBEY giant image inside of a star and the star is then placed on top of a second image.<ref name="April 2018" />
In 2017 a new documentary Obey Giant was created that is based on the life of Shepard Fairey.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Parodies
The original "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" sticker format has been widely imitated for humorous effect over many years. In these parody stickers, the image of André the Giant has been replaced with a similarly stylized black-and-white photo of some other person or character, along with the new figure's height and weight.
For example, the parody sticker "Tattoo the Midget Has a Bigger Posse" features the image of Hervé Villechaize portraying the character Tattoo from Fantasy Island. Colin Purrington's "Charles Darwin Has a Posse" stickers, featuring a black-and-white photo of Charles Darwin, promote the theory of evolution.<ref name="darwin_posse">Template:Cite web</ref> During the 2000 presidential campaign in the United States, "Ralph Nader Has a Posse"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> showed up on college campuses. Numerous other parody stickers can be found featuring different popular culture figures, including the Homestar Runner character Strong Mad.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
These parody stickers are a further extension of the original "joke", and thus are most likely to be found in locations where the original André the Giant iconography is already familiar, such as SoHo, Manhattan, or South Street, Philadelphia. An unusual occurrence of a parody sticker was at the particle physics laboratory Fermilab where the director of the lab, Pier Oddone, was the subject of the sticker.<ref>symmetry magazine, 2008.</ref>
Tenacious D produced stickers with the slogan "Obey the D" and stylized images of their members, Jack Black and Kyle Gass, over their initials. Guitar Hero II features a "Vlad Has a Posse" sticker on various loading screens throughout the game. Electronic Frontier Foundation created a sticker with the words "Fair Use Has a Posse" on it.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> "Joey Deacon Has a Posse" parody stencils have appeared in the United Kingdom.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
"Jack Has a Posse" stickers have appeared in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego, California, in July 2011 during the Esri International User Conference held at the nearby San Diego Convention Center. The stickers carry an image of US businessman Jack Dangermond, founder of Esri.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
ThinkGeek produced a T-shirt with the slogan "Fezzik Has a Posse" in March 2012,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> in reference to André the Giant's role as Fezzik in the movie The Princess Bride (1987) and the "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" street art campaign.
The cover of the April 2017<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> issue of Harper's Magazine features a photo of a protester with a sign parodying the "Obey" poster with a stylized portrait of President Donald Trump and the slogan "Disobey".
Gallery
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Sticker art in Darlinghurst, Sydney. 2025 -
Sticker art in Alexandria, Sydney 2025 -
Sticker art at the entrance to Town Hall Station, Sydney 2025.
See also
References
Further reading
- E Pluribus Venom by Shepard Fairey (2008) Gingko Press.
- Philosophy of Obey (Obey Giant): The Formative Years (1989 - 2008), edited by Sarah Jaye Williams (2008), Nerve Books UK.
- Obey: Supply & Demand, The Art of Shepard Fairey by Shepard Fairey (2006), Gingko Press.
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