Gauntlet Gallery
What is Shepard Fairey’s piece called “Kiss (First Edition)”?
Artist Statement
KISS Screen Print 18 x 24 inches Edition of 100 When I decided to do a KISS poster, I chose Gene Simmons because he was always my favorite member. I thought he had the coolest makeup, and I liked the blood dripping from his mouth and the pyrotechnics he always had around him. I threw Andre’s face in there with Gene’s makeup and hair, and did the Giant type to look like the KISS type. I tried to capture all the campiness of Gene Simmons and KISS and appropriate that for myself.
Summary
Kiss is a 1999 screen print, 18 x 24 inches, published by Obey Giant in a first edition of 100. Fairey appropriates the imagery of the rock band KISS, focusing on Gene Simmons, and fuses it with his own OBEY iconography. He layers Andre the Giant's face into Simmons's signature makeup and hair, and renders the GIANT lettering to echo the KISS logo's typography. The result is a deliberately campy mashup that absorbs the band's theatrical, pyrotechnic persona into Fairey's visual language, treating a pop-culture icon as raw material for his ongoing appropriation project.
Why It Matters
Kiss is a clear early example of Fairey's central method: taking a loaded pop-culture symbol and re-skinning it with his Andre the Giant face and GIANT typography until it reads as his own. By choosing Gene Simmons and mimicking the KISS logo lettering, Fairey foregrounds appropriation as both homage and critique, showing how easily commercial branding can be hijacked and re-coded. The print sits at the intersection of music fandom and the OBEY iconography that powers his street campaign, making it appealing to collectors who track how Fairey absorbed mainstream icons before his later, more political work. With a stated first edition of 100, it belongs to the smaller early Obey Giant runs that document his formative screen-printing years. The artist's own description, which explains his reasoning about Simmons's makeup, the blood, and the campiness, gives this piece unusually direct authorial context compared with many sparse early titles. That documented intent, plus the music crossover and the recognizable branding play, makes Kiss a useful anchor point for understanding how Fairey treated celebrity imagery as a medium for his own identity.
Collector Perspective
Kiss appeals to collectors who sit at the crossroads of music memorabilia and street-art appropriation. KISS fans and rock-poster collectors are drawn to the Gene Simmons subject, while OBEY collectors value the embedded Andre the Giant face and GIANT lettering. As an early first edition of 100, it suits buyers building a chronological Fairey collection or a thematic group around his pop-culture mashups. Visually it is bold and graphic, reading well framed alongside other late-1990s screen prints. Its documented artist statement adds provenance interest that many sparse early titles lack, making it a confident display and conversation piece for collectors who like to explain the work's intent.
Historical Context
Kiss dates to 1999, within Fairey's late-1990s Obey Giant screen-printing period, after the Andre the Giant sticker campaign had matured into a recognizable brand and before his Obama-era political prominence. In these years Fairey produced a stream of editions that reworked icons from music, film, and propaganda, testing how his Andre face and GIANT typography could colonize existing imagery. Kiss exemplifies that experimentation, openly appropriating the KISS logo and Gene Simmons's persona. It fits the collaborations-and-pop-culture strand of his catalog that ran parallel to his more overtly political and propaganda-styled prints, documenting a phase when Fairey was consolidating the visual vocabulary that would later carry heavier messages.
FAQ
What is Kiss by Shepard Fairey?
Kiss is a 1999 screen print, 18 x 24 inches, published by Obey Giant in a first edition of 100. It reworks the rock band KISS, centering on Gene Simmons, and merges his makeup and hair with Fairey's Andre the Giant face and GIANT-style lettering.
Why did Fairey choose Gene Simmons?
In his own statement, Fairey says Simmons was always his favorite KISS member. He liked the makeup, the blood dripping from his mouth, and the pyrotechnics, and wanted to capture the campiness of Simmons and KISS and appropriate it for himself.
How large is the edition?
The source lists a first edition of 100, published by Obey Giant. No additional editions are noted in the record.
What are the dimensions and medium?
Kiss is a screen print measuring 18 x 24 inches, according to the source record.
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.