Retrospective?

I think that one of the more apt reviews of Shep. Fairey's work is by n+1. I think if individual people want to like his posters/t-shirts/ephemera good for them. Art is something that people don't agree on. You can like it, I don't have to. But when the ICA decided to mount a "20 year retrospective" of his work, they should expect someone to raise the criticism that this artist is not even 40 yet. How could everything he's ever done since he was 18 be considered worthy of the intellectual weight of the ICA? Did making a sticker and selling a lot of t-shirts earn him a place in their schedule with Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor and Tara Donovan?

Compared to the Street Level show from a few months back, his work has not evolved into mature work as Mark Bradford, William Cordova, and Robin Rhode's work has. They call this a retrospective, a selection of work that looks back and looks again at an artist's work. But the ICA did not take this opportunity to place his work into a historical construct. There can't be a discusion of growth, as he is utilizing the same tired steal other people's work and wheatpaste in public method his whole career. There is nothing at all looking back about this exhibition. To discuss his shortcomings and his pitfalls. His influences. To understand his place in the lineage of artists. None of this is done by the ICA. Instead they mounted a fluffy piece of propoganda for an artist who already has a large ego.

One would expect at least a mention of the ever present question of his sources and what his work's real political value is. Instead the ICA didn't question anything other than by mentioning that his work sometimes could be read as mass-market and that he is daring and provocative as he flouts a Marxian high/low Art/art reading. Who cares? Where is the intellectual curiosity about him? Just like the numerous blogs that parrot his self-assertion as a Phenomenologist the ICA didn't question his version of his work or his self.