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A street-art satire of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, done Shepard Fairey-style

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In recent weeks, street-art stickers have been appearing around Los Angeles satirizing Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. What’s noteworthy about the stickers is that they appear to be created in the style of Shepard Fairey, featuring the artist’s ‘Obey’ logo printed in Facebook’s signature white-on-blue font.

The stickers feature a mug-shot rendering of Zuckerberg, surrounded by the text ‘Mark Zuckerberg has a posse,’ ‘$6.9 billion’ and ‘500,000,000 friends.’

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Look familiar? In the late ‘80s, Fairey created his viral street-art campaign known as ‘Andre the Giant has a posse.’ The campaign became a worldwide phenomenon and remains one of Fairey’s most recognizable works.

The creator of the Zuckerberg stickers appears to have modeled his or her design directly on the Andre the Giant campaign, down to the placement of the text and the mug-shot-style artwork.

Is Fairey behind the Zuckerberg stickers, copying his own past success? Or is someone satirizing Fairey satirizing Zuckerberg? (The possible levels of po-mo artistic commentary are endless.)

For now, it appears that the latter is true. The word from Fairey’s spokesman is that the artist isn’t the creator of the Zuckerberg stickers. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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-- David Ng

Upper photo A sticker satirizing Mark Zuckerberg on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. Credit: David Ng / Los Angeles Times

Lower photo: Shepard Fairey. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times


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