In “Hair,” Claude Hooper Bukowski reaches out to a sixties guru: “Answer my weary query, Timothy Leary, dearie.” Bukowski’s query is somewhat more difficult to recall: “Why is life dreary, dreary?” In a brief excerpt of Blacklisting Myself, Roger L. Simon recalls his night with Timothy Leary at a Hollywood crackhouse. The excerpt doesn’t address Bukowski’s query, but it suggests why Leary’s life was dreary.
Shepard Fairey’s name is also conducive to an effusion of rhymes, though he is not as well known as Leary yet. He is the graphic artist who produced the iconic image of Barack Obama. Today’s news brings word that the AP is contrary to Shepard Fairey — for lifting one of its photographs to produce his image of Obama.
The story on the AP’s lawsuit against Fairey fails to provide the appropriate background concerning Fairey’s artistic modus operandi. Fairey’s exploitation of others’ work for his own is not a one-off. Liberal Boston Globe cartoonist Dan Wasserman illuminates Fairey’s work in “How phony is Shepard Fairey?”
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