Year1999
MediumScreen Print
Dimensions24 x 18 in
EditionFirst Edition
Edition size100
PublisherObey Giant
SeriesOBEY Icon Series
EraEarly OBEY Era
Collector6/10
Visual7/10
Historical5/10
ScarcityScarce
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.” — Shepard Fairey
About This Print
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.
Market Context
No recorded public sales >= $100 - pieces like this are typically held long-term by investors/collectors, were destroyed or consumed, or do not surface on the open market.