Archive of Michael Anthony Farley

Michael Anthony has written 36 article(s) for AFC.

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Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara

Monday Links: Sketchy Small Fingers

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on March 21, 2016

Meet Ralph Wolfe Cowan, the man who painted an “oil sketch” portrait of Donald Trump and was then hounded for 15 years to “finish” it. [Hyperallergic]
Psychologist Vittoria Ardino, president of the Italian Society for the Study of Traumatic Stress, looks at drawings left behind by Syrian refugee children in a Milan train station. Yes, this is as depressing as you’d expect. [NPR]
Bad news for parts of Bushwick and pretty much all of Ridgewood: the last leg of the M train will close for repairs next summer. This is to prepare the line for the expected overcrowding when the MTA shuts down the L train in 2017. [New York Post]
David Pagel slams Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis’s show at Gagosian’s Beverly Hills branch: “if Israel and Ellis collaborate again, do it on billboards. Or in magazines. Leave the canvas for painters.” [Los Angeles Times]
Tom Sachs has two exhibitions and one film opening this Spring. I (Michael) love Tom Sachs, but both of these things sound like Tom Sachs has run out of stuff to make out of other stuff. Now we’re left with boomboxes and tea ceremonies? What? Both of these sound like projects that would come about as the result of (two very different) commissions sponsored by a sneaker brand or Japan’s tourism board, respectively. [The Wall Street Journal]
Two major Asian collectors have announced plans to build major museums in South and Southeast Asia. One of them, Indonesian businessman Haryanto Adikoesoemo, is funding all by himself a 43,000 square foot museum that will be part of his new business and residential development in Jakarta’s western Kebon Jeruk district. The institution’s director says that the museum won’t revolve around Adikoesoemo’s collection. (Yeah, I know.) [Art Newspaper]
The TL;DR version of this feature on making it as a working artist in New York? Don’t expect to survive on the gallery system. It’s a long read, but the two depressing takeaways are as follows: Ryder Ripps compares himself to Donald Trump, adding credence to the theory that he has built his career success on being a troll, suggesting that the internet’s attention economics has finally trickled down into the art world. If you wanna get on top, embrace personal brand valuation (read: ego fascism). And even if you have gallery representation, you can still lose out: William Powhida, also profiled, says he’s represented by four galleries but lost 12k last year on his art. [Crain’s]

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Wednesday Links: Cave, Hands, Reptile, Not Human

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on March 2, 2016

pig beach

Sans context, arguably the day’s creepiest-sounding headline: “Cave Art Hands Made by Reptile, Not Human”. [Discovery News]
When it’s cold, I like to compare airline tickets on Flight Scanner — somewhere, anywhere, warm. Right now, I’m looking at the Bahamas, solely because I want to visit Pig Beach! It’s actually called Big Major Cay, and is a mysterious island where dozens of feral pigs live. Wouldn’t it be fun to swim with pigs? They’re highly social and smarter than dogs, dolphins and three year olds. They like to play and relax in the sun—I’ll take hanging with a pig over a parrothead at a surf bar any day. [National Geographic]
Hrag Vartanian was at yesterday’s Met Breuer press preview, and wasn’t impressed, especially by its main exhibition of the so-called “unfinished”, “an almost exclusively Eurocentric stroll through Western art history.” Ouch. [Hyperallergic]
Phillips CEO Ed Dolman says the art market is in a period of consolidation. Apparently only 51% of lots at their “New Now” auction of emerging art on Monday reached buyers. [Bloomberg]
On the mainstreaming of selfie feminism, it’s uncomplicated relationship with narcissism (largely shaped by the baggage of “basic bitch” white feminism), and how artists — specifically, black women, femmes, and gender-nonconforming — can potentially “demolish the gaze”. [The New Inquiry]
Miri Regev is Israel’s new Minister for culture and sport and she sounds horrible. She’s threatened to defund “disloyal” artists, punish theater troupes who refuse to perform in the occupied territories, and banned a book about an Israeli-Palestinian couple from schools. [The Guardian]
OK, this is pretty great: a UK firm has created an official “period policy” for female staffers. [The Guardian]
Instagram of the Day: Veteranas and Rucas, an archive of photos from the 1990s Chicano underground. [KCET]
Silvia Killingsworth, currently managing editor of the New Yorker, has become the editor of The Awl and The Hairpin. She starts in April, and will be overseeing a revival of both sites. [The Awl]

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Avoiding Anything Armory Edition

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on March 1, 2016

Art-fair haters rejoice! The Armory Week Fairs are upon us, but there is art to see and events to attend that don’t require traveling through the halls of a convention center. Take the launch of Lorna Mills’ monthly GIF presentation on the electronic billboards of Times Square as part of Times Square Arts, or the opening of the Artist’s Institute’s new uptown home, which will kick off its six month season focused on the inimitable Hilton Als. Both take place outside of an art fair booth and in the real world!

Looking to escape the fairs this weekend? Flux Factory launches the Fung Wah Biennial, presenting the work of artists on the Chinatown bus routes. This Saturday, the destination is Boston, so if you’re looking for a post-Armory ride, this might be the ticket. (But act quick: as of writing, ten tickets are left.)

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The Art F City Survival Guide to the 2016 Armory Week Fairs

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on February 29, 2016

Do you like art fairs? If yes, you are in luck! If not, get the hell out of New York City this week. Art fairs are multiplying like Gremlins, and mutating as they spawn. We now have specific art fairs for everything: paper, video art, solo projects, Asian art, curator-driven booths, independent artists, dykes, shiny things, boring shows… there’s something for everyone.

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Monday Links: Pop Blasphemy

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on February 29, 2016

Brazilian artist Ana Smile has pissed off Catholics by repainting religious figurines as pop culture characters like Maleficent or Batman. [Dangerous Minds]
There’s a nonprofit in San Francisco that hires drag queens to read to children in libraries. [SF Gate]
In other Bay Area news, Google’s weird AI has its first art exhibition. Should we all be bracing ourselves for more terrifying psychedelic dog landscapes? [Wired]
When a new pigment hits the marketplace, all bets are off. Last year, it was the accidental discovery of a new blue pigment by chemists at the Oregon State University. This year, it‘s vantablack, and it looks like Anish Kapoor has already rained on the parade by buying the exclusive rights to a black so pure it’s absorbs 99.96% of light. This has pissed off other artists — does a blue-chip artist really deserve exclusive rights on a pigment? — and one of them, painter Christian Furr, is already planning a whole series using the shade. [Daily Mail]
The Hnatyshyn Foundation has launched a new awards program that will give 150 cash awards totalling $1.5 million to Indigenous artists in 2017. [Canadian Art]
Gerhard Richter has penned an open letter decrying the closure of the Museum Morsbroich near Cologne. The German institution, frequently named the best museum in North-Rhine Westphalia and has hosted shows in the past by artists like Yves Klein, Rosemarie Trockel and Richter himself, is closing as part of municipal cost-cutting measures. Worst, it appears the city wants to sell the museum’s collection. In his letter, Richter rightfully states that “a public art collection is not a financial investment that can be plundered depending on the cash situation. It is a piece of art history and represents the cultural memory of its trustees.” [The Art Newspaper]
Institutions around the world are deaccessioning pieces at a breakneck speed. This can help museums pay off debts from expansion projects, but is also “the cultural equivalent of burning the furniture to heat the house”. [Maclean’s]
Who knew 10cc’s “The Things We Could Do For Love” could be used as the soundtrack for an animated musical sequence on chapters 19-40 from the Book of Exodus? This comes from Nina Paley’s upcoming animated film Seder-Masochism. [Vimeo]
Tilt Brush is a VR drawing/painting program that looks like it’s probably so much fun to use that I’m afraid to try it. Here, the writer says we’re waiting for a maestro of the medium. Based on our experiences at DiMODA, I think it’s Jacolby Satterwhite. [The Verge]
The Met has made at least one signage change that people might like: the “recommended” $25 admission will now be “suggested”. [The Guardian]
Art world headline of the day: Why Casey Jenkins is vaginal knitting your online abuse into art [ABC News]

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Thursday Links: Politicians take to Grindr, this Time for Work

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on February 25, 2016

Huey Rey Fischer is a queer, vegetarian, Latino progressive Democrat running for state representative in Texas’ District 49, and he’s campaigning for millennial voters on Grindr and Tinder. [Slate]
Shameless SPRG BRK plug: Brooklyn Magazine’s Paul D’Agostino checks in with Paddy about AFC upcoming projects, including a group GIF show commissioned by Providence College that’s dropping late-March. More details to come, but in the meantime, if you haven’t bought your ticket to our March 15 benefit, get on it. [Brooklyn Magazine]
This video showing how rubber gloves are made is so fascinating and beautiful and a little creepy and you won’t want to stop watching it. It’s like an assembly line from the mind of Stanley Kubrick. [Facebook]
Vienna’s Bank Austria Kunstforum is planning a retrospective of controversial, deceased painter Balthus, who has been accused of paedophilia. Austria’s right-wing FPÖ party is none too happy about it. [artnet News]
A selfie-stick for your Macbook. [macbookselfiestick.com]
Someone has been uploading thousands of eerie Youtube videos that may or may not contain a secret message. [Atlas Obscura]
Not sure how Toronto-based art collective VS VS VS managed this, but it appears you can get a Google Street View Tour of their Port Lands studio. [@vs_vs_vs]
Talk about a giant leap for GIF art: Lorna Mills’ Mountain Light/Time — a GIF of a sunrise over a mountain — will be playing on Times Square’s electronic billboards as March’s Midnight Moment. [Times Square Art]
The second edition of my (Michael’s) monthly architecture/urban planning column “Degenerate City” is out. In this iteration, I discuss Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s plan to demolish buildings in impoverished Baltimore neighborhoods as an act of iconoclasm rather than actual policy. [City Paper]
Pedro Neves Marques reviews Stan Douglas’s “The Secret Agent” at Victoria Miro. [Art Agenda]
“I never expected #idiocracy to become a documentary” — the creator of Idiocracy. [The Hill]

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Thursday Links: Can’t Wait to Put the Armory Show Behind Us

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on February 11, 2016

Image via the New York Times

Charlie is a 1 year old kangaroo currently serving as resident therapy animal at Utah’s William E. Christoffersen Veterans Home. He hops around and gives hugs to the veterans and their families. (Related: What Does a Parrot Know about PTSD) If you’re feeling down, the #therapyanimal hashtag on Twitter should cheer you up. [The Dodo]

Just in case we were starting to get bored with the whole Scumbag-Martin-Shkreli-Bought-the-Wu-Tang-Clan-Album drama, the plot thickens. Now everyone tangentially related to the album’s creation and ownership are being sued by fan-artist Jason Koza over copyright infringement. Koza refers to himself as “one of the most talented portrait artists of the Second Millennium [sic]”. All parties involved are expected to arrive in court in a clown car. [artnet News]

“I dig the dopey, doglike look on the swimmer’s face too. It hints at something deeper or more embarrassed. He looks like the kind of straight cute lunkheads in high school who’d let you blow them, you know?” Brandon Soderberg on “Flaming American (Swim Champ)” By Marsden Hartley. [City Paper]

Neoliberal Lulz is the latest project from London-based Jennifer Lyn Morone™ Inc. The artist now identifies as a corporation, and is selling her personal data—everything from the stuff collected and monetized by Google and Facebook to the information hackers might steal. [The Guardian]

Long Island City artists are facing the threat of displacement. A dance company had to renegotiate a 70% rent hike to a 40% increase. Following LIC’s 2001 rezoning which led to 35,000 new residents in the area, it appears independent companies are being forced to relocate in order to make way for luxury condos. [LIC Post]

And what’s heading to LIC? Lots of skyscrapers. There’s currently a race to build Queens’ new tallest building. [Curbed]

On the emergence of Amish romance novels, and its booming rural, religious mom readership. [The Paris Review]

Art museum social media producers are really emerging as the new power players, as attested by this recent profile on the MET’s Kimberly Drew. I [Rea] love how Drew’s favourite hashtags are #BlackLivesMatter, #CaughtGrammin and #arthoe. [NBC News]

“It’s probably the first and last time a magazine has used a Gramsci quotation to introduce its readers to Ice Cube.” This is so amazing: in 1991, Angela Davis interviewed Ice Cube for Transition Magazine. [Dangerous Minds]

Fascinating video portrait of Zun Lee. The Toronto-based documentarian and photographer co-curated Fade to Resistance, an exhibition currently on at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel of found Polaroid of African-American families from the 1970s and 1980s. [Format Magazine]

Curator Marta Kuzma has been named dean of the Yale School of Art. She’s the first woman to hold the position. [Yale News]

Here’s a slideshow of previously unseen Picasso works. In total, 271 unknown Picassos were unveiled by a retired French electrician who once worked for the artist and had a secret stash of his work in his garage. [The Telegraph]

Eyeroll highlights from the Armory Show talks includes Blake Gopnik discussing his forthcoming Warhol biography with Warhol Museum director Eric Shiner, and Jerry Saltz engaging in a deathmatch with Armory director Ben Genocchio on “visual criticism in the digital age”. [The Observer]

Cindy Sherman is on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, part of a photoshoot where the artist poses as the type of groupies one might see outside of NYFW waiting to be documented by street fashion photographers. I hate to love this, but it’s really the most Cindy Sherman thing to do with a fashion mag. [Harper’s Bazaar]

We wrote about the malware museum on Tuesday, but the Internet Archive has far more than just this available thanks to its 3.1 emulator software. Here is a collection of curated Windows 3.x software that shows the range of software products available in the early 1990s. Does anyone else think Castle of the Winds and Net Hack are remarkably similar? [Internet Archive]

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Wednesday Links: Look at This Giant Rabbit

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on February 10, 2016

An SPCA shelter in Scotland is looking for someone to adopt this giant rabbit. The internet is going crazy. THE RABBIT IS HUGE! [Jezebel]
Is a Rotterdam museum’s new open art storage facility a game changer for cultural institutions? Set to open in 2018, the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen’s storage space will enable its entire collection to be viewable to the public, a first in the institutional world. And 10% of its storage will be rented out to private collectors for €350 to €400 per square meter. Beyond the potential conflicts of interest, this seems like a win-win situation — collectors get access to conservation services, the museum gets more private investment and artwork loan opportunities. [The Art Newspaper]
Sergei Shchukin amassed one of the most impressive collections of modern art in the early 20th century. After the Russian revolution, those artworks were scattered to state-owned museums. Now, they’re being reunited for a show at the very-capitalist Louis Vuitton museum in Paris—the first time the collection has ever been shown outside of Russia. [The Guardian]
According to Kate Wadkins, punk is in the air: she surveys the current wave of shows, including PUNK Magazine’s 40th anniversary exhibition at HOWL! Happening and a collection of West Coast punk-related Xerox prints and zines at Printed Matter. [Hyperallergic]
The latest from the blue chip rumour mill: it appears White Cube no longer represents Marc Quinn. [The Baer Faxt]
If you’re looking to expand your art therapy coloring book collection, the National Archive’s coloring book of strange patents (chicken goggles! robot rides!) might fit the bill. [Popular Science]
Hoverboard porn is now a thing. [Daily Dot]
There is a genre of fan fiction known as “Larry” that imagines a homoerotic relationship between two members of the boy band One Direction. London artist Owen G Parry has used this material (mostly written by teenage girls) as inspiration for his latest exhibition. Picture pregnant Harry Styles, and you get an idea of how very, very weird this is. [The Telegraph]
The strange history—and even stranger success—of Jerry Vile’s annual erotic art festival in Detroit, The Dirty Show. [Detroit Metro Times]

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Wednesday Links: Yoko in D.F., Cats in Worcester, Art-Porn in Dallas

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on February 3, 2016

Gustave Courbet, “Woman with a Cat,” 1864. Now on view at the Worcester Art Museum.

Somehow we missed this in our guide to D.F. events, but Yoko Ono has an exhibition that opens today at the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia: Mexico, Tierra de Esperanza (Land of Hope). It’s not too far from the art fairs, so if you’re in town, check it out! (Link is in Spanish) [El Universal]

Stylist Ursula Goff does hair inspired by art history—from acerbic and wavy in tribute to Edvard Munch to flat-blue and big like a Lichtenstein woman. [Mashable]

The Worcester Art Museum summer exhibition, Meow, promises an exploration of the feline as an art inspiration, pulling cat-related works from their collection. The show also will include a self-guided “cat walk” through the Museum and a “Cats-In-Residence” programme promising an “unorthodox” human/cat installation. I love cats, but I think I agree with Tyler Green’s assessment on this: “hard to imagine how this isn’t a substantial, mindless pander.” [Worcester Art Museum via @TylerGreenDC]

Twenty-first century progress: rainbow bagels now exist. [Buzzfeed]

LACMA’s long, strange trip to acquire a 1940s zoot suit for its upcoming historical survey on men’s fashion. [Los Angeles Times]

Dallas Contemporary has a new exhibition Black Sheep Feminism that features the work of Joan Semmel, Anita Steckel, Betty Tompkins and Cosey Fanni Tutti—artists who embraced t”he “pornographic” at the height of anti-sex second-wave feminism. From Sarah Galo: “Perhaps the greatest testament of Black Sheep Feminism’s power is that the outrage is irrelevant now for young feminists; sex positivity is the order of the day.” [The Guardian]

Related: June Mattingly, one of Dallas’s great supporters of art, has died. The former gallerist promoted the work of Texan artists, as well as started the Dallas Art Dealers Association and was a founding member of the Emergency Artists’ Support League. [Dallas Observer]

Belinda Lanks thinks we should all accept the new, “meh” Penn Station plans because “we don’t care about poetry when we’re stuck on an Acela arriving from Washington and train traffic is preventing us from making a meeting in Midtown.” To which I say: speak for yourself. [Bloomberg]

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Tuesday Links: Performance Art Starter Pack

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on January 26, 2016

Via @ladysimonnyc

Steve McQueen finally weighs in on #OscarsSoWhite, calling it a “watershed moment”, but notes how there’s also a lack of diversity among film set crews: “It’s like Johannesburg in 1976, if you go behind the scenes … I made two British movies [Hunger and Shame] and I never met one person of color in any below-the-line situations. Not one. No black, no Asian, no one. Like, hello? What’s going on here? Very odd.” [artnet News]

Carolina A. Miranda profiles the stARTup Art Fair, the “new kid” at LA’s art fair weekend. The year-old San Francisco fair focuses on artists without representation, and will be taking over rooms in Hollywood’s Highland Gardens Hotel. [Los Angeles Time]

Thorton Dial, the self-taught artist best known for his assemblages, has died. After years working as a metal worker for the Pullman Standard boxcar factory, Dial was “discovered” by artist Lonnie Holley and then collector William Arnett in the late 1980s. He was the subject of a 2011-2012 retrospective at the High Museum of Art, and his work is owned by institutions like the MoMA, the Whitney and the Smithsonian. [Atlantic Journal-Constitution via Artforum]

Catherine Opie’s portrait project of Elizabeth Taylor’s home finally opened at the MOCA Pacific Design Center last weekend, which means more photos have been released via the ongoing media coverage, including a detail of Taylor’s cowboy boots collection and touchingly her large pile of diamond and crystal-encrusted AIDS red ribbon brooches. [Slate]

Open call alert: Queens Museum is now accepting applications for the Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship Program for Emerging Artists. The fellowship awards three emerging NYC-based emerging artists a $20,000 grant each, as well as professional development and curatorial support. The fellowship begins this March and culminates in an exhibition at the Museum in March 2017. Deadline is Feb 1. [Queens Museum]

“But where cringing celebrity optimization meets big money, can there be serious art?” Here’s the expected critical lambast of Ai Weiwei’s installation for Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche’s display windows in Paris. [Hyperallergic]

Mansudae, the North Korean art factory (the world’s largest!), has been quietly exporting its own brand of Socialist Realism to dictatorships the world over. They have a gallery in Beijing’s arts district, across the street from Pace! [The New York Times]

There’s concern that Istanbul contemporary art center SALT has been forced to close one of its locations due to pressure from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s increasingly conservative government. SALT director Vasif Kortun claims the closure is the result of missing building permits. Anyone in Istanbul know what’s going on? [artnet News]

We’ve talked a lot about Sarah Meyohas’ residency in 303 Gallery, where she’s been trading stocks and translating the results into paintings. Now, those paintings are done. I (Michael) think they’re pretty anticlimactic/obvious. But they’re selling and got featured on a cable news finance segment, so mission accomplished? [CNBC]

Andrew Nunes reflects on Lucy + Jorge Orta’s exhibition Antarctica at Jane Lombard Gallery. The show is the culmination of nearly a decade’s worth of research and utopian-minded projects on the icy continent, beginning with 2007’s The End of the World Biennale. This looks fun. [The Creator’s Project]

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