Political Culture Meets Pop Culture
You know that Barack Obama image ... it's here ... there ... everywhere it seems this year, CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports. It has become the iconic image of the campaign.
"It is more having to do with Obama than having to do with me," said Los Angeles street artist Shepard Fairey, who designed the image.
He says he had no grand design, but to draw people, especially young people, into this election.
"I found an image that once simplified and stylized, having the shadows fall in red on one side of the face and blue on the other side of the face to symbolize a merging of the red states and the blue states and using the colors of the American flag - all aspects of it converging in a way that I think was powerful," Fairey said.
How powerful? His original run of 350 posters mushroomed to 400,000 and counting. It went viral on the Internet ... even spawning copycats.
It's a mainstream hit for an artist who usually runs on the wild side, staging guerrilla art attacks across the country, plastering his images on any empty space, challenging passersby to challenge authority.
"I've been arrested many times for doing street art," Fairey said, estimating he'd been taken in 14 or 15 times.
So, before he spread Obama's image around, he did something he's never done before. He asked permission.
"I did not want to be a liability to the Obama campaign," he said. "So when they said, 'we like your stuff, go ahead and make a poster,' then I was like 'ok.' If something happens, it's on them, not me," he laughed.
And the icing on the cake for Fairey - even more than the results of last night's election?
"When I met Obama, he said: 'I love this image,'" Fairey said.
As an artist, he says he's always skeptical. Yet he has the word "hope" underneath the Obama image. Does he mean it genuinely?
"I absolutely mean 'hope' genuinely, and I'm not saying that Obama is going to solve everything, but I just think that younger people caring about Obama, participating, it's an improvement in the political culture," he said.
Political culture meets pop culture. A thousand words couldn't say it better.
