Shephard Fairey, Rise Above, 2012. Mural, Singleton Avenue, Dallas, Tx. Photo: Colleen McInerney

Shepard Fairey, the legendary street artist and graphic designer best known for his Hope posters for the 2008 Obama campaign, spent the first week of February 2012 in Dallas, Texas. Invited by Dallas Contemporary, the city’s non-collecting kunsthalle, Fairey and his crew took to the streets daily, painting murals and interacting with interested viewers. The five completed murals were celebrated at a dance party at which Fairey presided as DJ.

On Thursday evening, February 2, Dallas Contemporary invited curator Pedro Alonzo to interview the artist.  Peter Doroshenko, the director of the museum, estimates that 500 of the 560 people in attendance had never previously stepped foot inthe museum.  As Fairey walked into the main part of the raw warehouse space, after signing books for an hour, the room was completely quiet.

Alonzo asked him how he feels about working outside.  “I enjoy working outside; it engages members of the public that don’t necessarily go to galleries or museums … and, maybe makes people that do go to museums pay a little bit more attention to what’s going on in the street, so it’s this cross-pollination that’s happening.”

As I scanned the audience, I saw a lot of young people wearing Obey clothing (Fairey’s brand) and raptly awaiting the voice of their hero.  Fairey spoke of his own heros, the bands and musicians that resonated with him as a teenager:  “The Clash and a few other punk groups had a great sense of style and seemed like they were enjoying their lives.  It was cool to care, and that made me want to care even more … in order to be socially conscious and engaged, it shouldn’t be drudgery.”

Fairey’s punk roots still inform his ideology.  Often, his work has a specific call to action yet the work is never a simple endorsement.  In using a palette based on propaganda posters, he begs the viewer to question the message as well as the platform.  In Dallas, his murals have messages like “Peace” and “Rise Above.”  While Shepard was setting up to paint, I asked him about these seemingly straightforward, non-confrontational messages.

“Everything in life is a little bit of a balance between being soothing and inspiring and confrontational and agitational.  I’m taking an approach that is absolutely core to my practice and my values… but also, not going to make the lives of the people who work at the museum more difficult.”

Fairey is no loose cannon.  He is rebellious for a purpose, but also respectful for that same purpose: to get his art out there without compromising what he believes.

An audience member at the museum asked him: “What happens to a rebellion when the rebels win?”

He responded with a humorous bit about how power corrupts and how he is now a bastard.  And then with a serious tone, he said: “When Nirvana became popular, I was psyched because hair metal got pushed off the radio … I like it when rebels win.” In an interview with Peter Simek the next day in the Dallas daily blog, D, he elaborated on this theme: “When Nirvana came on the radio, I wasn’t an outsider-elitist who was like, ‘Oh, well, now more than five people know about Nirvana, I hate them, they sold out because they resonated.’ Resonating is not selling out. Selling out is compromising your values to pander to the lowest common denominator.”

Before and after: Shephard Fairey, Obey, 2012. Mural, Dallas Contemporary building, Glass Street, Dallas, Tx. Photos: Colleen McInerney

Fairey isn’t the only recipient of the “sellout” epithet.  It seems to attack any artist with a wide level of merchandising: Keith Haring, for instance, with whom Fairey shares methodology. “Other artists had been accusing me of selling out since my paintings started selling,” Haring is on record as saying. “I mean, I don’t know what they intended me to do: Just stay in the subway the rest of my life?”

In setting up their respective Pop shops, Haring and Fairey both wanted affordable wares available to the people.  The market can be populist or else it will be elitist.  Fairey wants his designs accessible, to function on a viral level, through stickers, tee shirts and posters.  If art is about engagement, then it should be a sign of success that Doroshenko is receiving an unprecedented number of “thank you” emails and calls from the Dallas community for this exhibit. Commercial success in relation to an artist’s integrity is an important discussion, but the proof of integrity is in the work: the streets of Dallas have a far richer dialogue, thanks to Shepard Fairey.

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Cowboys Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys football team, officially opened on June 6, 2009. Jerry and Gene Jones, owners of the Dallas Cowboys, funded the majority of the 1.2 billion dollar project. The 3-million–square-foot structure of glass and steel is full of architectural superlatives: the world’s largest retractable glass doors, the world’s largest HDTV video board, and arched trusses that span 1290 feet. The space is so vast that, according to the catalogue, you could fit the Statue of Liberty comfortably on the 50-yard line and it would not touch the roof.

Franz Ackermann, Coming Home and (Meet Me) At the Waterfall, 2009. Acrylic on wall, dimensions variable. Located in Southwest Monumental Staircase. Photo: James Smith/Dallas Cowboys

But those are not the facts that initially astounded me. In an unexpected marriage of art and sport, the Joneses hired Mary Zlot to serve as art consultant, and she quickly assembled an art panel of distinguished curators and collectors to help choose artists to exhibit in the stadium. As a result, the stadium is home to 21 museum-worthy contemporary art pieces by 19 internationally renowned artists: Olafur Eliasson, Ricci Albenda, Franz Ackermann, Lawrence Weiner, Jim Isermann, Dave Muller, Matthew Ritchie, Doug Aitken, Terry Haggerty, Gary Simmons, Mel Bochner, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Daniel Buren, Annette Lawrence, Teresita Fernández, Wayne Gonzales, Jacqueline Humphries, Eva Rothschild and Garth Weiser. The Joneses privately funded the art collection beyond the 1.2 billion dollar building cost. In Gene’s words, “a great building needs great art.”

Upon hearing about the art in the stadium, I was intrigued and apprehensive. I was concerned that the artwork would be exhibited in limited-access areas to enhance the cultural cachet of the Cowboys brand without allowing the art to interact with the public. And, if the work were prominently visible in the public area, had the art committee suggested “appropriate themes” or did the artist retain control?

Mel Bochner, Win! 2009. Acrylic on Wall?38 feet 2 inches by 33 feet 3 inches. Located in Northeast Monumental Staircase. Photo: James Smith/Dallas Cowboys

Mel Bochner has a text painting prominently located on the wall facing the Monumental Staircase. The painted blue box contains the black text of exclamatory words and phrases in capital letters, starting with “Win!” Bochner?s signature style delivers complexity through language. (The words seem aggressive, lighthearted, out-of-fashion, and silly all at once.) I asked Bochner if there was any pressure to change his design. Bochner explained that initially the owners suggested some changes to some of his phrases. So he set the stage for the relationship, explaining that artwork is: “an all-or-nothing situation. The language was not negotiable. [The Joneses] accepted those conditions and, I must say, [they] have been extremely enthusiastic ever since.” The relationship was one of trust, Gene Jones told me, and “of course, the artist was right.”

As for accessibility, the higher-priced suites and club levels have some wonderful works that are not visible to the general ticket holder (unless you purchase an art tour through the Dallas Museum of Art). But the main entrances, the concession areas, and the Monumental Staircase all have art, so every fan will see at least 3 or 4 artworks on any given path.

And these main stairways and entrances hold some of the most transformative pieces. The show stealer is the wall-wrapping painting from Franz Ackermann. It’s not only the enormous scale but also the brightly colored imagery based on architectural forms and memory of place that create an energetic and intimate escalator ride. For those walking the large pedestrian ramps, they will be ascending and descending next to an odd and powerful grid of striped mounds set in brightly colored flowers—the kaleidoscopic world of Trenton Doyle Hancock. Even above the concessions counter, which in my opinion is the most difficult spot, the Terry Haggerty has a captivating rhythm of red and white stripes, with an op-art, hypnotic wave. The A/C vents take on a humorous role, punctuating the bottom of this striped form.

The 19 artists are all heavyweights, but the works that interact specifically with their installation site are the most effective. In a calculated risk, Eliasson relies on light for thematic unity.  The sunlight streaming in from the entrance windows gives his clunky, mobile-like celestial shapes the lightness that his materials contradict. Through reflection and refraction, these discreet metal and glass objects, in their suspended pull from the ceiling, become connected to each other and to the walls of the passageway.

Terry Haggerty, Two Minds, 2009. Acrylic on wall, 21 x 126 feet. Located in Main Concourse, Northeast Concession. Photo: Richie Humphreys/Dallas Cowboys

Though many of the chosen artists had completed permanent installations prior to the stadium project, some had not yet had the chance. Such was the case for Annette Lawrence, creator of “Coin Toss,” a muscular yet elegant work of opposing tension made of stranded cable attached in a c-shape on each opposing wall. Normally, Lawrence works with string and tape, creating delicate and impermanent installations. I asked her if the new installation was a conceptual challenge. She replied that the impermanence was not a philosophical stance, but rather a reaction to the functioning of the space. “I just didn’t have the opportunity before. [...] In a gallery or alternative exhibition space, exhibits are temporary situations.  The luxury of space made these pieces possible.”

The Dallas Museum of Art is holding a concurrent exhibit with many of the same artists, entitled Big New Field, which runs through February 20, 2011. On one hand, this dialogue between the stadium and the museum can be seen as an effort to capitalize on the tourism associated with the Super Bowl, but it’s also a study in context.

For those interested in the cultural future of the museum, this dialogue is important. Charlie Wylie, a curator at the Dallas Museum of Art and part of the art panel that chose the artists for Cowboys Stadium described the experience of seeing artwork there as: “exhilarating [...] more spontaneous and direct than in a museum where you specifically go to encounter works of art. A big reason we organized the Big New Field exhibition was to provide visitors with the chance to compare the experience of seeing art in both the stadium and the DMA, and I hope they realize both venues have their own unique qualities and will come back to both often.”

Art is an ongoing education. I asked Gene Jones, herself a collector of Norman Rockwell, which of the artworks surprised her the most once she saw it realized. Her original conception of the stadium’s interior was sleek and subtle, a palette of neutral tones. Franz Ackermann’s piece was assigned a multi-storied wall in the southwest area of the Monumental Staircase and his proposal was bold, bright, and saturated—oranges, pinks and blues! She was apprehensive about this vivid color and large-scale palette switch, but it would be her greatest surprise—when she saw the Ackermann on the wall, she “fell in love with it.” In many ways, her stadium experience has shifted her prior understanding of art. She has now embraced contemporary art, and recently collected her first piece for the Joneses‘ private residence in Dallas.

In a 2001 critique of the sculptural-spectacle architecture of Frank Gehry at Bilbao, Hal Foster complained that the architecture “trumps the art.” Prior to seeing Cowboy Stadium, I was concerned that the interior functioning of the building—the signage, the scale, the volume, the throngs of activity—would “trump the art.” But in the best pieces, those feared distractions are integrated as tension, movement, and energy. If the artist can counter the moment of Brand marketing, and make a piece that connects to the mystery of individual awareness, then the artist has “trumped the frenzy.” And in this stadium the artists were given the space and the freedom to do just that.

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