Yes we can

I was surprised to find Fairey’s work featured on sweaters … for dogs. Then I was astonished to see Fairey posters recycled to draw French president Sarkozy’s attention to environmental matters.

Now a remarkable campaign uses elements of Fairey’s images and Obama campaign literature to promote consumption.

The Nouvelles Frontières travel agency in my neighborhood put up a poster advertising “crisis prices,” with a stylized stock market ticker –with plenty of ups and downs– points to an airplane. The poster proclaims: Go on vacation during the crisis? YES WE CAN!*

A crisis of some sort has been going on in France for as long as I can remember. But this poster manages cleverly to wrap turmoil in the financial markets and Obama’s electoral triumph.

I was tickled by the asterisk. It tempers the emphatic affirmation. But the qualification is especially endearing because it’s basically impossible to read whatever the asterisk points to: there’s some very small print, written sideways in the margins of the poster; if you can read it from the street, bravo.