The US artist Shepard Fairey has criticised the use of one of his works in two election campaign videos posted by France’s far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) party. In the videos posted by Jordan Bardella (13 and 17 June), the RN president addresses viewers sat next to a work by Fairey depicting Marianne—a major symbol of the French republic.
The artist told Le Monde: “The far right ruins the spirit of the imagery that is about fraternity and living together, giving a nationalistic interpretation that puts boundaries in place." The journalist Roxana Azimi writes in Le Monde that Bardella is “targeting a young electorate and he is taunting [President] Emmanuel Macron, who put forward the same art work during his 2017 presidential campaign.” Rassemblement National did not respond to a request for comment.
The lithograph, emblazoned with the French motto “liberté, egalité, fraternité”, was initially an homage to victims of the terror attack at the Bataclan venue in Paris in November 2015. Fairey made the image open source, allowing anyone to download it for free from his website obeygiant.com. In 2016, the image was turned into a monumental mural and hung in Paris’s 13th arrondissement (it was later defaced by activists, protesting against security laws, who added red tears).
In a YouTube film posted in 2021, Fairey says: “I love the French slogan [liberté, egalité, fraternité]; these are all things I think democratic societies value. The image did not have any specific political affiliation.”
President Macron called legislative elections (which will take place on 30 June and 7 July) after Rassemblement National gained 31.4% of the vote in the European elections in June (Macron’s Renaissance party only scored 14.6%). Macron said it was time for France’s people and politicians, “who do not recognise themselves in the extremist fever”, to build a new coalition.
In 2022, when Marine Le Pen, the leader of Rassemblement National, was running for president against Macron, The Art Newspaper reported that her arts programme “fuell[ed] fears of renewed culture wars and a distrust of journalists, artists, contemporary arts centres and museums, as well as the art market”. We asked Rassemblement National for its current arts and culture policies; at the time of writing, there was no response.
On 24 June, Bardella presented some of his main policies at a press conference. During the speech, he confirmed that some “dual nationality” candidates would be excluded from public office. “As for dual nationals, I confirm to you that the most strategic positions in the State will be reserved for French citizens and French nationals,” he said.