Required Reading

This week, being trolled by Fox News, a photograph that took 720,000 exposures to get right, Lee Miller’s war photography, ISIS and looting, drones catching drones, and more.

 Michael Anthony Farley of Art F City was trolled at Art Basel Miami Beach by Fox News‘ new comedy news segment on The O’Reilly Factor, but he didn’t take it sitting down and wrote the real dialogue as he remembers it:

JW: Uh, no I wasn’t. I mean, really? Is that real? So you think if we all stop driving SUV there wouldn’t be terrorists?

Me: No, but maybe if you stopped driving SUVs you wouldn’t be supporting oil economies like Saudi Arabia who do fund terrorists.

(At this point the camera man started to laugh and Watters realized he should wrap-up the interview, because a small crowd was forming and filming/agreeing with my responses)

JW: So I guess you agree with the Black Lives Matter protestors.

Me: Uh, if I didn’t agree with the Black Lives Matter protesters, what would my stance be? “Black Lives Don’t Matter”? Are you asking me if I think black lives don’t matter? (This is when I started to lose my temper and more camera phones came out)

Bravo, Michael!

Here is the highly edited Fox segment:

 How to build a sustainable city:

But it’s my belief that the future of public transportation is in systems like bus rapid transit, which some think of as a “surface subway.” BRT systems make use of existing infrastructure — changes often involve designating dedicated lanes, making adjustments to right-of-way rules, and targeted technological upgrades to eliminate the delays associated with urban buses. Because of their good performance, cost effectiveness (it’s cheaper than building a subway) and flexibility in implementation, BRT systems, which started in the Brazilian city of Curitiba in 1974, are now in place in almost 200 cities worldwide including Bogotá, Seoul, Istanbul, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro, and many more could follow. I see the BRT as evolving to one day become a system of light electric vehicles with rubber tires running on exclusive tracks, re-charging at each stop.

… Cities must offer hope, not desperation. A sense of shared identity, the feeling of recognition and of belonging to a specific place, improves quality of life. A city must provide reference points to which people can relate and connect — rivers, parks, public buildings. Such spaces tell stories and protect memories, much like a diary or a family portrait.

 Gaby Wood writes about Lee Miller’s war photographs at the Imperial War Museum in London:

Lee Miller: A Woman’s War (until 24 April) reveals this more clearly than any earlier grouping of her photographs. The exhibition has been rigorously conceived by Hilary Roberts, who has done excellent work in the past on the photographic history of World War One, and on the war work of Miller’s nemesis Cecil Beaton. Roberts has assembled a collection to prove her contention that most of Miller’s subjects were women, and in doing so has admirably avoided the obvious. She doesn’t include the pictures of troops directing mortar fire or badly mangled sergeants which were reproduced in a volume called Lee Miller’s War ten years ago. Though Miller was among the first to enter Dachau at its liberation, her pictures of corpse-filled train cars, famously published in British Vogue under the heading ‘Believe It’, aren’t here. Nor is the one of the SS guard who hanged himself at Buchenwald. Instead, we see prisoners forced to become camp prostitutes, and a prisoner turned camp nurse. Earlier, Miller had documented the work of the Wrens in Britain and nurses in field hospitals in France. Now, she photographed the other side.

 Just when you thought the union of bad art and gross politics couldn’t get more intimate:

A painting of Bush’s campaign slogan and the Twitter hashtag – “#All In For Jeb” – were unveiled Saturday before friends and supporters at the Miami studio of artist Romero Britto.

Britto and Jeb’s wife, Columba, collaborated on the artwork. It features a bright, glittering red sunset against a background of colorful stars with the phrase #AllInForJeb dominating the painting.

 You need to know:

 Archeologist and sometimes Hyperallergic contributor Christopher Jones is interviewed about the reality behind ISIS and looted artifacts:

HistoryBuff: How much money is ISIS making from looted artifacts?

Christopher Jones: A lot of people have thrown around some pretty ridiculous numbers that they pulled out of thin air. It is common to hear journalists talk about ISIS making tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars from antiquities, which is impossibly high.

The first report that presented hard evidence came from Guardian reporter Martin Chulov, who was allowed to examine spreadsheets on USB sticks captured by Iraqi troops during a raid on an ISIS safe house near Mosul. He wasn’t allowed to keep copies of the documents, but he recalled that they recorded ISIS had made $36 million from looting just from the Qalamoun region near Damascus in Syria.

The $36 million number became a standard figure in media reports, but it was very misleading. First, “looting” didn’t just mean stealing artifacts–it also meant stealing people’s cars, furniture, TVs and anything else. Second, ISIS doesn’t seem to consider pillaging archaeological sites to be looting. Instead they classify ancient artifacts as a “natural resource” to be extracted from the ground, akin to oil or mineral deposits.

US special forces killed ISIS’ director of natural resources during a raid outside Deir-ez-Zor in Syria last May. Inside they found a receipt book which indicated that revenue from antiquities for the period from November 2014 to May 2015 was $1.25 million. This is still a lot of money, but nowhere near as much as some media sources reported.

 The mainstream media’s sick relationship with Donald Trump:

Trump, as the nation has quickly learned in these past months, is always good to say something outrageous. In more innocent times, that trait was great for a quick-hit post. When Nelson Mandela died, a deeply important world event that was not New York-centric, we could write about Trump’s dubious claim they were best buds. When Trump hinted in a tweet that he was going to run for president in 2013, or all those times he said he would run for mayor: hahaha, ridiculous, what a fucking orange clown, publish.

 Your mind-blowing stat for the day: There are 44 NFL players who have been accused of sexual or physical assault.

 The Tokyo police force now has drones with nets to catch other drones (meta):

 Strangely related … Joseph DeLappe’s Bierstadt drones gifs:

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

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