Gauntlet Gallery
What is Shepard Fairey’s piece called “Cop 2 (First Edition)”?
Artist Statement
Screen Print 18 x 24 inches Edition of 100
Summary
Cop 2 is a 1998 Shepard Fairey screen print published by Obey Giant in a first edition of 100, measuring 18 x 24 inches. The image presents an authoritarian police figure rendered in Fairey's high-contrast, propaganda-poster vocabulary, isolating a symbol of state power and surveillance as the subject. As one of Fairey's early Obey Giant editions, it uses bold graphic reduction and a limited palette to turn an everyday emblem of authority into a confrontational icon. The print belongs to a tight cluster of late-1990s editioned works that recast figures and symbols of control and ideology through the visual language of mass-produced propaganda.
Why It Matters
Cop 2 sits within the formative late-1990s phase of Fairey's Obey Giant project, when he was extending the sticker-and-poster street campaign into deliberately editioned fine-art screen prints. The subject, a figure of police authority, fits Fairey's recurring interrogation of how power and control are visually communicated and absorbed by the public. By rendering a cop in the same flat, commanding propaganda style he applied to ideological leaders and slogans, Fairey invites viewers to question the manufactured authority embedded in such imagery. For collectors, works from this 1998 edition-of-100 group are significant as relatively early, low-edition examples that bridge Fairey's raw street practice and his later, more polished political print output. The small stated edition size and 1998 date place it among the scarcer early Obey releases. Its value to a collection is less about a single famous image and more about documenting the period when Fairey's visual critique of authority, surveillance, and propaganda crystallized into a repeatable, collectible format that would define his career.
Collector Perspective
Cop 2 appeals to collectors who focus on early Obey Giant material and on Fairey's critique of authority and surveillance rather than his later celebrity portraits. With a stated first edition of just 100, it draws buyers who value scarcity and provenance within the 1998 cohort of screen prints. Displayed alongside companion images like Cop, Stalin, Grenade, and Mao, it reads as part of a coherent late-1990s statement on power and propaganda, making it well suited to a thematic or chronological Fairey collection. Its 18 x 24 inch format is gallery-friendly and pairs naturally with other works of identical dimensions from the same year. Collectors drawn to the confrontational, graphic side of Fairey's catalog, as opposed to decorative floral or music works, will find this a defining early entry.
Historical Context
Cop 2 dates to 1998, a pivotal moment when Fairey was consolidating the Obey Giant project that had grown from his 1989 Andre the Giant sticker campaign into a recognizable artistic program. During this period he produced a sequence of 18 x 24 inch screen prints in editions of 100 that appropriated charged political and pop-culture imagery, including ideological leaders and symbols of state force. A police figure fits squarely within his early preoccupation with how authority manufactures and projects its own image. These late-1990s editions predate Fairey's wider fame and his 2008 Obama Hope poster, positioning Cop 2 in the foundational Posters and Propaganda phase of his arc, when his visual critique of control and obedience was being codified into the propaganda-inspired aesthetic that defined his later work.
FAQ
What is Cop 2 and when was it made?
Cop 2 is a 1998 Shepard Fairey screen print published by Obey Giant. It depicts an authoritarian police figure rendered in Fairey's high-contrast propaganda style and belongs to his late-1990s sequence of editioned political and pop-culture images.
How large is the print and what is the edition size?
The print measures 18 x 24 inches and was issued as a first edition of 100, according to the source record. It is a screen print published by Obey Giant in 1998.
How does it relate to Fairey's other 1998 prints?
It is part of a tight cluster of 1998 edition-of-100 screen prints, including Cop, Stalin, Grenade, and Mao, all 18 x 24 inches. Together they form an early Obey Giant statement on authority, power, and propaganda imagery.
Why do collectors seek early Obey screen prints like this?
Works from 1998 predate Fairey's wider fame and were issued in small editions of 100. Collectors value them as foundational examples of his propaganda aesthetic and as scarcer entries documenting his transition from street campaign to editioned fine-art prints.
Related Works
About the Artist
Shepard Fairey (b. 1970, Charleston, South Carolina) is an American street artist, graphic designer, and activist, and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. His 1989 “André the Giant Has a Posse” sticker grew into the global OBEY GIANT campaign — an ongoing experiment in propaganda, obedience, and visual culture. He reached worldwide recognition with the 2008 “Hope” portrait of Barack Obama, now held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Across screen prints, stencils, murals, and collage, Fairey channels propaganda aesthetics toward themes of peace, justice, environmentalism, and civil rights. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and LACMA.