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Matty Mo

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Matty Monahan
Mo in 2018
Born1985 or 1986 (age 40–41)
Boston, Massachusetts
Known forstreet art, contemporary art, collaborations
Movementcontemporary art, street art
Websitethemostfamousartist.com

Matty Monahan (known professionally as Matty Mo)[1] is a Los Angeles–based contemporary artist and marketing entrepreneur best known for creating the conceptual art group "The Most Famous Artist". Through this group, Monahan makes and promotes art installations, exhibitions, performance art, and publicity stunts to bring attention to how technology and the Internet impact society.[2] That same year, ABC News reported on his large-scale public installation in Los Angeles where he painted three residential homes bright pink as a commentary on class, community and digital legacy.[3] Monahan's "#selfiewall" in the Venice Beach neighborhood in Los Angeles was dubbed by Los Angeles Magazine as being "The Most Instagramable Wall in L.A." and ABC's Nightline said his art is an "instagramer's dream."[4][5][6]

Early life

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Monahan attended Stanford University and had a career in advertising technology.[5]

"The Most Famous Artist"

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Monahan launched his platform, "The Most Famous Artist," in 2013 when he began taking preexisting paintings and adding something to them or painting over their surface.[7] This concept of appropriation is a longstanding one in art history and was used by iconic artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol.[8] Mohanan, however, adds an awareness of digital promotion and social media to this technique that modernizes its impact.[5][9]

"100 Thousand Dollars" (2016)

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In 2016, Mohanan created ten works, each one resembling a stack of one thousand $100 bills; however, only the bills on the top and bottom of the stacks were visible making their literal monetary value a mystery.[5] The stacks were priced at $5,000 each and the first sold within twenty minutes of being posted on Instagram.[10] While buyers could look through the stacks of cash to count their actual monetary value, Mohanan added a seal to each piece that keeps all the bills together and said it will become an illegitimate art object should that seal be broken.[11]

"The Pink House" (2017)

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In 2017, "The Most Famous Artist" group painted three houses in a Los Angeles residential neighborhood bright pink that were scheduled for demolition and to be replaced by a high-end apartment building.[12] The installation was embraced on social media but also seen as an important lens on gentrification and community displacement.[13][14][15][16]

"Artificial Intelligence: THE END OF ART AS WE KNOW IT" (2017)

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In 2017, the group mounted a solo exhibition at The McLoughlin Gallery in San Francisco where they partnered with anonymous hackers to build an artificial intelligence capable of analyzing and reproducing art styles of iconic artists, such as Chuck Close.[2] The first group of images is a series of portraits of people, including: factory workers, art dealers, pilots, artists and taxi drivers, whose jobs could one day by eliminated by artificial intelligence.[17] This exhibition serves as starting point for a discussion about the challenges facing humanity in light of big data, AI and robots.[18] In 2019, one of the artworks from this exhibition, an AI-created portrait of Mark Zuckerberg, was featured on the cover of Rotman Management Magazine.[19]

"The Private Jet Experience" (2018)

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Simulating the experience of flying on a luxury private jet, the group built an interactive installation that, when photographed from a particular angle, makes participants appear to be on a luxury Gulfstream G3. The purpose of the experience is entirely for social media optics, an approach Forbes called "brilliantly outrageous."[20] The work was installed in the Fred Segal store in Los Angeles and is set to travel around the country, including Miami Beach during Art Basel in 2018.[21]

"The Fyre Experience" (2019)

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As homage to the Fyre Festival in 2017, The Most Famous Artist built a selfie-centric installation satirizing the failed music event.[22] The installation recreated infamous details from Fyre Festival as possible: cardboard cutouts of celebrities who endorsed the festival, cheese sandwiches in polystyrene containers, stacks of fake money, a simulated hot tub full of Evian bottles and a sandy beach with a Bahamas background.[23]

Also in 2019, Hulu and Netflix each released documentaries on the failure, Fyre Fraud and Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, which partially inspired this project.[24]

"Matty Marries Miley" (2019)

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Nearing the one-year anniversary of Miley Cyrus's short lived marriage to Liam Hemsworth, Monahan proposed to Cyrus on social media--a stunt to amplify his credibility as a performance artist.[25] Cyrus publicly responded to the post, saying “it probably won’t last long, but always down to try. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”[26]

"The Monolith" (2020)

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In 2016, a metal pillar that came to be known as the Utah monolith was placed in a remote sandstone slot canyon in San Juan County, Utah.[27] Since then, similar mysterious and unauthorized pillars have appeared in California, Nevada, the United Kingdom, Romania and the Netherlands.[28] Monahan, as "The Most Famous Artist", initially took credit for installing the monolith but later admitted that the work was not his.[29]

Public Speaking

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In 2016, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art's Artinfusion Insight program hosted Monahan to speak about his innovative use of social media in his art and, in 2017, he delivered lectures at Sotheby's Institute of Art and at the Tech Open Air conference in Berlin.[30][31]

ABC's Nightline, 2019

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ABC News produced the video, "Meet Matty Mo, 'The Most Famous Artist' you've never heard of," the most comprehensive account of Monahan's platform and art to date.[6] In the interview, Monahan discusses the integral role the internet plays in his installations but also the ways in which he is inspired by, and further extends, concepts derived from art history.[6] Specifically, Monahan explores art monetization in a manner similar to Kaws, participatory installations similar to Yayoi Kusama, and headlines and stunts to broaden his message similar to Banksy's approach.[6]

References

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  1. ↑ Kraus, Rachel (December 4, 2020). "Stunt artists who claim they're behind the alien monoliths sell new ones for $45,000". Mashable. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  2. 1 2 Carter, Felicity (June 27, 2017). "The Most Famous Artist: Art Meets AI". Forbes. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  3. ↑ Munoz, Anabel (June 14, 2017). "Vacant homes become pink-hued art in Mid-City". ABC7 Los Angeles. American Broadcasting Company. Retrieved January 15, 2018.
  4. ↑ Yotka, Steff (October 28, 2015). "Exclusive: Gucci Collaborates With Artists on an Instagram Initiative". Vogue. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Herbst, Julia (February 1, 2016). "Matty Monahan, AKA The Most Famous Artist, Paints Uber-Popular Selfie Backdrops All Over L.A." Los Angeles Magazine. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Meet Matty Mo, 'The Most Famous Artist' you've never heard of". ABC. Archived from the original on December 11, 2019. Retrieved December 17, 2019.
  7. ↑ Lee, Patina (March 16, 2016). "Who is The Most Famous Artist? Contributing to a Discussion on Meaning in Art". Widewalls. Archived from the original on November 9, 2018. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  8. ↑ "Matty Mo". Widewalls. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  9. ↑ Tiffany, Kaitlyn (September 26, 2018). "What 10 influencers and artists have to say about Instagram's co-founders quitting". Vox. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  10. ↑ Lee, Patina (April 18, 2016). "This Artist Sells Money as Art - 100,000 for 5,000 Dollars?". Widewalls. Archived from the original on March 27, 2019. Retrieved July 27, 2026.
  11. ↑ Chang, Lulu (April 19, 2016). "Meet the man selling bundles of cash on Instagram and calling it art". Digital Trends. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  12. ↑ Bromwich, Jonah Engel (June 16, 2017). "California Today: Batman, a True Angeleno". The New York Times. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  13. ↑ Bruner, Raisa (June 16, 2017). "People Are Going Wild for Some Controversial Hot Pink Houses". Time Magazine. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  14. ↑ Weiner, Zoë (June 12, 2017). "Millennial Pink Houses Are Taking Over One Neighborhood in Los Angeles and It's All for Instagram". Teen Vogue. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  15. ↑ Chandra, Jessica (June 14, 2017). "Pink Houses For Instagram in LA". Elle. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  16. ↑ Specter, Emma (June 13, 2017). "Do Not Instagram These Pink Houses, They Are A PR Stunt To Sell Rosé". LAist.com. Archived from the original on December 26, 2017. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  17. ↑ Lekach, Sasha (June 28, 2017). "Artist ironically uses AI to make portraits of people with jobs likely displaced by AI". Mashable. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  18. ↑ Mo, Matty (June 26, 2017). "Artificial Intelligence: THE END OF ART AS WE KNOW IT". Medium. Archived from the original on October 27, 2018. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  19. ↑ "The Disruptive Issue II (Winter 2019) - Rotman School of Management". Rotman Management Magazine. Retrieved December 17, 2019.
  20. ↑ Carter, Felicity (November 18, 2018). "The Private Jet Experience By The Most Famous Artist And SelfieCircus". Forbes. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  21. ↑ "Do it for the 'gram: Don't miss these photo-worthy Art Basel installations". Miami Herald. McClatchy. February 7, 2019. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  22. ↑ Hosie, Rachel (January 30, 2019). "An artist has created an installation called 'The Fyre Experience' which allows people to take pictures pretending they're at the failed festival". Business Insider. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  23. ↑ Adejobi, Alicia (January 31, 2019). "You can pretend to be at Fyre Festival with 'ultra luxurious' pop-up". Metro. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  24. ↑ Bailey, Calfee (February 1, 2019). "You Can Eat A Cheese Sandwich In A Box At This Fyre Festival "Experience" Pop-Up". Nylon Magazine. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  25. ↑ Schnurr, Samantha (December 19, 2019). "Miley Cyrus Has a Totally Realistic Response to This Marriage Proposal". E! News. Retrieved December 19, 2019.
  26. ↑ VanHoose, Benjamin (December 20, 2019). "Miley Cyrus Says 'It Probably Won't Last' in Response to Joke Instagram Proposal". People Magazine. Retrieved July 28, 2026.
  27. ↑ Yuhas, Alan (November 24, 2020). "A Weird Monolith Is Found in the Utah Desert". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 16, 2020. Retrieved March 30, 2024.
  28. ↑ Bahr, Sarah (December 7, 2020). "California Men Declare Themselves Makers of Pine Mountain Monolith". The New York Times. Retrieved December 7, 2020.
  29. ↑ Schrader, Adam (May 23, 2024). "The Artist Who Falsely Claimed Credit for the Utah Monolith Has Opened a Sculpture Park". Artnet. Retrieved January 23, 2026.
  30. ↑ "Tech Open Air Conference & Speakers". Tech Open Air. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  31. ↑ "The Most Famous Artist at Sotheby's Institute of Art". Amira Press. Archived from the original on November 9, 2018. Retrieved July 28, 2026.
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