JSG Boggs is an artist with a difference. This young American
specializes in drawing money - and then he goes out and literally
spends his drawings. There's no attempt at serious counterfeiting;
although the draughtsmanship is breathtaking, he rarely draws both
sides of a bank note and makes no attempt to pass off his work as
the real thing. Nevertheless, he estimated he's succeeded in
'spending' around a million dollars worth of drawings at face
value, by interacting with ordinary people who thought owning a
piece of original art was at least as worthwhile as owning a
notional sum of money in paper form. Hardly surprisingly, his
activities have attracted the disapproval of financial and legal
institutions the world over as well as the admiration and support
of such artistic luminaries as David Hockney and Gilbert and
George. He was arrested by Scotland yard detectives who later
dropped the case, bemused. More seriously, he was pursued by a
distinctly unamused Bank of England, culminating in a landmark case
at the Old Bailey where Boggs was acquitted by a jury despite the
judge having directed them to convict. Weschler's scholarly but
readable account attempts to disentangle the moral, ethical and
aesthetic issues that surround Boggs's brand of subversion. To what
extent can paper, or electronic, money be said to have real value,
and by whose authority? Is it possible to put a value on artistic
endeavour? Can wealth be 'created'? in any genuine sense? With Mr
Boggs still very much alive and kicking - and still under threat of
legal proceedings - this is a fascinating topical tale, told with
elegance, humour and panache. (Kirkus UK)
In this text, Lawrence Weschler chronicles the antics of J.S.G.
Boggs, a young artist with a certain panache, a certain flair, an
artist whose consuming passion is money, or perhaps, more
precisely, value. What Boggs likes to do is to draw money - actual
paper notes in the denominations of standard currencies from all
over the world - and then to go out and try to spend those
drawings. Instead of selling his money drawings outright to
interested collectors, Boggs looks for merchants who will accept
his drawings in lieu of cash payment for their wares or services as
part of elaborately choreographed transactions, complete with
receipts and even proper change - an artistic practice which
regularly lands him in trouble with treasury around the world. This
volume teases out these transactions and their sometimes dramatic
legal consequences, following Boggs on a larkish, though at the
same time disconcertingly profound, econo-philosophic chase. For in
a madcap Socratic fashion, Boggs is raising all sorts of truly
fundamental questions - what is it that we value in art, or, for
that matter, in money? Indeed, how do we place a value on anything
at all? And in particular, why do we, why should we, how can we
place such trust in anything as confoundingly insubstantial as
paper money? In passing, Weschler frames a concise, highly
entertaining history of money itself - from cowrie shells through
hedge funds.
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