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Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch
by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 30, 2015
- There’s a new investment firm that allows clients to purchase shares in an art collection “at a fraction of the cost” of actually buying art. The minimum investment? $10,000. Here’s our free advice: if you want to “invest” $10,000 in art, spend it buying a dozen works from emerging artists. [Small Business News]
- This incredibly sexist but still kind-of-adorably-local-news article out of Utah has a headline straight out of the Onion: “Pinterest says nude photos could be considered art; mom disagrees.” [KSL]
International Sailor Moon Day is coming to New York on August 15. [Facebook]
- The best explanation of the ARTnews/Art in America merger comes from—no surprise—Julia Halperin at The Art Newspaper. She’s one of the few who’s recognized that Peter Brant may come out as the real winner. [The Art Newspaper]
- Investigative journalism performs at its best when it looks at a commonplace situation, then digs really hard at the surface, finding out its problems. Here, that problem involves quaaludes, McDonald’s, and a lenient bathroom policy. [The New York Times]
- Follow the #hillaryinnh (Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire) for plenty of feminist shrugging. Like this one, that praises her for being not just a mother, but also a daughter and a grandmother. Did I just say feminist shrugging? I meant feminist ugggh-ing. [Twitter]
- Robert Wilson looks back on performance art’s early days as a fringe medium to its emergence as a major component of the contemporary art canon. [The Observer]
- Many universities have art collections that date back from their early days. But what do they do with them? ” Are they like the contents of an upmarket car boot sale, an irrelevant, even embarrassing inheritance that many universities don’t quite know how to handle?” [Times Higher Education]
- Michael Jackson’s sequined white glove goes up to auction. If you have 20k, jump on it! [The Guardian]
- RoboCup 2015 just ended. Here’s some highlights of little robots playing soccer. [International Business Times]
- Take it from Christian Viveros-Faune: art can be stupid. Not to mention, jis closing line in this review is near-perfect. [The Village Voice]
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by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 28, 2015
- Paul Mason makes a convincing argument that we’re quietly teetering on the cusp of “postcapitalism.” Markets have failed, the correlation between labor and wages is shaky, and economies based on information make no sense financially; there’s no scarcity of knowledge and it’s human nature to share (rather than monetize) it. [The Guardian]
- Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and many other non-insane people think weaponized AI is a terrible idea. Can’t we all agree to just let the bots do what they love: making weird pictures with dog faces, spamming the comments section of blogs, and posing for “sexy” videos at Japanese convention centers that creep everyone out on YouTube? [TIME]
- There goes the neighborhood: Jeff Koons bought up 50,200 square feet of West 52nd Street. It looks like he’s creating a massive new Hell’s Kitchen studio after being ousted by his former Chelsea landlord. [Realty Today]
- The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is asking Makoto Aida to change or remove his latest piece. The museum planned a summer exhibition aimed at children and (for some reason) invited the notoriously controversial artist to contribute work. His submission, a collaboration with his wife and teenage son, is a political rant aimed at the education system. [The Japan Times]
- Look! It’s a bathtub-headed sim. [Daniel Rourke]
- Artist and writer Sara Clugage writes about her near-spiritual obsession with Britney Spears, both as a teen and as an artist. At one time, Clugage writes, Spears was pretty much a celebrity cipher: “I saw that emptiness in Britney Spears, too. Given an icon without meaning, we pour in our own souls, making gods in our own image. I saw a writhing mass of contradictions: a visual promiscuity but a verbal purity, a public persona but an unknown person, a Hollywood starlet but a Louisiana girl. I imagined her as a saint, one of the highly sexualized Catholic ones with a baroque mixture of pain, ecstasy, and physicality.” [Pelican Bomb]
- The Church of Satan has unveiled its giant Baphomet statue during a massive ceremony on the banks of the Detroit River. Of course, Christians showed up to protest. The sculpture is itself an act of protest against displays of Christian symbols on government property. It is also so much cooler than any of the other lame religious art that’s been hanging out on red state capital buildings and courthouses. [International Business Times]
- The Seattle Art Fair is luring out some big-name gallerists. Are galleries like Gagosian going after the Pacific Northwest’s tech-industry new money? Here’s a handy little guide to art collecting aimed at techie collectors. Bitcoin is not recommended. [artnet News]
- Hey, photography curators, apply for this two-year curatorial fellowship at the Michener Museum in Pennsylvania. The fellow will be salaried and receive benefits. [Michener Museum]
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by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 20, 2015
- From art-school hip-hop acts to testicle-nailing performance artists: a brief survey of what’s being censored in Putin’s Russia. [Newsweek]
- London collectors Eskandar and Fatima Maleki have settled their suit against dealer/curator Amir Shariat. The couple, who made a fortune in the oil industry and sit on the board of the Tate, alleged that Shariat was profiting from their art transactions without their knowledge. There aren’t any details about how exactly he was making money, but isn’t that what dealers are supposed to do? [The Telegraph]
- In Berlin, Der Spiegel contributor Ulrike Knöfel lists off a ton of problems with the city’s museums: they’re boring, ugly, and uninspiring, leaving them with low visitor numbers. Knöfel locates a “dearth of blockbusters,” which would up the visitor numbers. Whatever happened to quality? [Der Spiegel
- Online archivists in the arts may want to keep an eye on Iceland. The Reykjavík Art Museum’s website now features information on the roughly 1,000 exhibitions held since 1973. That’s a big, important undertaking. [Iceland Review]
- Curators are not happy with the Louvre’s plan to construct a massive new storage facility for the museum’s collection. The scheme involves transporting hundreds of thousands of artworks to a small town 200 kilometers south of Paris. This site is several hours from the capital and will make research, loans for exhibitions, and display rotations a logistical nightmare. [The Art Newspaper]
- If you’re curious about the how art forgers and thieves get away with their crimes, the New Inquiry editor Malcolm Harris has interviewed someone in the art-crime industry who has witty, British answers to all of Harris’s questions. You will learn a lot, like that it’s surprising that forgers get away with anything. “Han van Meegeren’s Vermeers don’t look anything like Vermeers, but they managed to fool people. It is always the accompanying story, the invented provenance — which is essentially a confidence trick that manages to pass off the object — that really tricks the buyer.” [The New Inquiry]
- People of the Internet, pls submit to Internet Yami-Ichi, a one-day “Internet black market.” Artists, galleries, and normal people are all hosting booths to sell their wares—like at ye olde general store or at an intergalactic trading hub like Mos Eisley—still accepting submissions for booth ideas. All ya gotta do is follow these rules: 1) Sell things related to the Internet; 2) No dangerous, harmful, or illegal goods, please! This black market wants to remain free and useful. [Internet Yami-Ichi]
- Here’s one more article about how New York is unaffordable for artists. This piece stands out for mentioning some strategies artists and organizations are taking to mitigate the crisis. Had anyone else never heard of SPARC (Seniors Partnering with Artists Citywide) before? The program gives artists a stipend and workspace in the city’s senior centers in exchange for providing programing and classes for the elderly. [Next City]
- Drinking eight glasses of water is a myth! [Spectator]
- Is spam “dying out”? Not really, but for the first time in twelve years, less than 50 percent of all email is spam. [Motherboard]
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by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 13, 2015
Freaky fairy tales. Digital misfits. Pore-free faces. In a society on the move towards being post-kale, there’s something to be said about trying to find sincerity in all the digital fakery out there, but making it our own. That’s what we’re pretty sure we’ll see in this week’s round-up of art openings, from Egress at K. (Monday) to the #BHQFUOS artists in residence at the Bruce High Quality Foundation University Open Studios (Friday).
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by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 10, 2015
- Dutch designers Viktor & Rolf wrapped models in dresses that look like broken paintings at Paris Couture Week. Will painting always return to the “hot chicks on canvas” genre? These are really stupid. One redeeming quality: they remind me of that time Krystle fought Alexis in her painting studio on Dynasty. [Dezeen]
- Ain’t no drama like Nicolas Bourriaud drama. The famed writer/curator was recently fired from his position at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts by French Minister of Culture Fleur Pellerin. Apparently the scandal involves a sordid extramarital affair! Talk about ministering to French culture! Amirite? Since then, there’s been a media outcry with accusations of nepotism, petitions, and sassy exchanges in the press. [artnet News]
- In an epic story that spans the majority of the past century: how the Leslie + Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art became the world’s first gay art museum. [Smithsonian]
- Apparently job growth in the “creative sector” has outpaced New York City’s traditional economic engines of finance and real estate. Over the past decade, jobs in the visual arts alone grew 24 percent. So, uh, how about an increase in wages? When cost of living is factored in, New York’s cultural workers are actually earning significantly less than their peers nationally. [Hyperallergic]
- Is this in poor taste? It’s difficult to make me (Michael) groan, but it was hard to watch this unaired Saturday Night Live skit tackling the awkwardness of normalcy given the current state of race relations in America. [NBC]
- Good news: President Obama has designated a swath of the Nevada desert as a “Protected Landscape.” The area includes sculptor Michael Heizer’s famed, gorgeous “City” which will now be spared from future development encroaching on the desert. [Review Journal]
- Congratulations to Gary Carrion-Murayari of the New Museum and Alex Gartenfeld of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, who will curate the New Museum’s 2018 Triennial. [New Museum]
- Tracing artist Jon Rafman’s work from his earlier, self-proclaimed romantic work, like “9 Eyes” and “Kool-Aid Man in Second Life,” to his current interest in the internet’s marginal communities. [Momus]
- Ever lament the lack of criticism on the Internet? Well, Bookforum hands out daily reviews, y’all. Complain no more. [Bookforum]
- Public Art Fund is hiring an associate curator. Jump on that application, you up-and-comers! [Public Art Fund]
- Diva! Patti Lupone snatched a phone out of a texting audience member’s hand during a Broadway performance, all while never breaking character. [The Guardian]
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by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 9, 2015
In which we both admit our love for Regina Rex.
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by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 8, 2015
It’s always a surprise to see a group show, think you “get it,” and then read the curator’s statement and realize you’re totally off. That was my experience of almost everything we saw. That’s rewarding in its own way, though. And it gives me optimism that there are artists and curators veering away from the obvious, overly referential, and aesthetically homogeneous.
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by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 7, 2015
- Nope, that’s not a still from “Blade Runner.” That’s just Beijing. [Gizmodo]
- I (Michael) have been off-and-on obsessed with cyberpunk over the years. People often tell me it’s no longer relevant. Claire L. Evans posits that cyberpunk lost its appeal (or at least its visibility) because we already live in the future presaged by its writers. But isn’t that part of the appeal? Nostalgia for a genre softens the harsh reality of living under global mega-corporations, city-gobbling biotech parks, inescapable advertising, international hacking intrigue, killer drones, and a surveillance state. Like, how many people in all-Underarmour outfits are ordering sex off a cracked iPad screen right now? [Motherboard]
- Or we could blame 1995 for killing cyberpunk. That year, no less than six mainstream movies attempted to exploit the craze—and according to one writer, they were all terrible. Personally, I think Strange Days was one of the decade’s best films, and super relevant given the state of sousveillance, police brutality, and our addiction to user-generated content. [Paste Magazine]
- Related: Here is a collection of the absolute worst hacking scenes in movies. [College Humor]
- Thank you, Google, for showing us that androids dream of psychedelic sheep. Someone fed the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas into the infamously trippy AI neural network and the results are pretty much what you’d expect. [YouTube]
- Reddit fired one of its administrators. In a show of solidarity, unpaid moderators went on strike, shutting down a sizeable chunk of the site’s boards. People are freaking out. Recode looks at the particular challenges and risks associated with attempting to manage a hive mind. [Re/code]
- Reddit “apologizes” to its users. [Reddit]
- PSA: Whenever you feel like your feed is full of shit, you can always rely on The Awl to make you feel better about the state of writing. It’s full of real writers, writing like real humans! And they cover real issues, like the WeWork revolution taking place in New York. [The Awl]
- Fundraising is now more important to museums than ever. Case in point: the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center “unexpectedly announced” that development director Veronica Kessenich would become executive director of the institution. [Burnaway]
- The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive has finally announced an opening date for its new building: January 31, 2015. The opening has been pushed back due to a number of California-specific concerns, like earthquakes. [The Daily Californian]
- Uh, for real, is ISIS selling looted antiquities on Whatsapp? Just a little bit. (My thoughts on ISIS and looting, here.) [Bloomberg Business]
- Ming Wong is a queer Singaporean artist who unites sci-fi and drag for performances in Shanghai. Can we be friends? [The Beijinger]
- Eric Edwards has collected $10 million worth of African Art. Until now, the 1,600-piece collection has only been on view in his apartment. He’s hoping to open a museum in Bed-Stuy. [Gothamist]
- How bad is this outdoor sculpture of Nefertiti? So bad that Egyptians are offended. The replica is now being removed. [BBC News]
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by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 6, 2015
This is one of those New York City weeks that gets off to a slow start and then builds up to a Friday night of frantically running around to see it all. It’s also one of those great weeks that reminds you the city is still full of people doing awesome, cheap projects with a DIY ethos.
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by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 6, 2015
The strange world of sunburn stock photography. Ow.
- How popular are different art businesses globally, according to Facebook likes? Apparently Americans like Christie’s more than Sotheby’s. [ARTnews]
- Don’t do “sunburn art”! (As if this were a “real” trend….) [Standard Daily]
- Australia’s art funding is facing “dark days” due to budget cuts. [The Guardian]
- Also facing a budget crisis: Chicago public schools. The city is cutting the schools’ budget by $200 million. [Marketplace]
- An insightful article on the former sources of performance art. The author wonders about some outsider sources as well, from Oofty Goofty, a feral man-beast covered in tar, to Mr. Eat It All, a guy who tried to eat a waterbed for a promotional event. [Glasstire]
- This is not surprising: art is really popular among the mega-wealthy. JJ Charlesworth talks about the rise of the prices in relation to the new global elite and the concept of scarcity as value. [artnet News]
- “Incredibly fast and easy loans against your artworks. 4% Monthly, No Fees. Money tomorrow.” The mega-wealthy can now receive low-interest loans from ArtRank by leveraging their art collection as collateral. [Observer]
- The Studio Museum in Harlem has just announced that David Adjaye is designing a $122 million new home for the institution. Unfortunately, it looks like this means the current building, which dates from 1914, will be joining the list of historic structures in Harlem that have been demolished in the past few years. [The New York Times]
- Horror fans and art-school students, rejoice! This Halloween, you’ll be able to feast your eyes on Art School of Horrors, a Roger Corman production, where “bad art wants revenge.” [IMDB]
- Baltimore has awesome bars and creative people—who actually want to be friends with you. [The New York Times]
- In China, the exhibition ban on Ai Weiwei has been lifted. The artist remains unable to travel outside the country. [The Art Newspaper]
- A piece of public art in Liverpool has been destroyed by vandals. The sculpture was a brass bird with electronics that played recordings of city residents talking about their hopes and dreams. Everyone’s a critic. [Liverpool Echo]
- Hello, bears! It’s bear-cam season. [Explore]
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