The Beatles

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In 1996/97, Shepard released a set of four prints featuring the images of three of the four members of The Beatles. The fourth Beatle, George Harrison, was replaced by Andre. This set is considered by many collectors to be the "holy grail" of Obey prints (sometimes fetching up to $6000 for the set, it is definitely the most expensive). In 2000, a print that simply says "The Giant" was released. Only 10-15 were made, and all were marked AP. The print was made to look like The Beatles logo, and for this reason is considered The Fifth Beatles Print.

The four prints in the Obey Beatles set are based upon photographs taken by John Kelly. Prints of these photographs were included as part of the inside packaging of The Beatles 10th album, self-titled The Beatles and commonly referred to as The White Album.

Paul
John
Ringo
George (model for Andre print)

In 1996, a single print featuring all four images was produced. This print's quad design and image order is modelled after Richard Avedon's Beatles work seen below:

Image by Richard Avedon

From Supply and Demand, pg. 261:
With the Beatles series, I again hijacked something with more cultural clout than Andre the Giant or professional wrestling, or my dada art project for that matter. In a sense, the Beatles are such a venerated pop culture institution that replacing George Harrison’s face with Andre’s is kind of irreverent, but people also have such a positive association with the Beatles that there’s somewhat of a Pavlovian euphoria to just produce portraits of the Beatles and associate Andre with it. That was one of my most sought-after sets of work, another example of my piggybacking onto the cultural cache of something and benefiting from it, but I don’t really feel guilty about it because that’s the currency out there, and there are lots of exchanges of cultural currency.


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