Trends and Entertainment

Boom’s Over, Boys: Art’s New Take on Money

Brooklyn artist Mark Wagner creates intricate collages from currency, like Petty Cash (2008).

What is art for? In the boom years, many people, if answering honestly, would have said art was status symbol, investment, an excuse for socializing (and social climbing) at art fairs and gallery openings from New York to Miami to Switzerland. During the boom, artists prospered instead of starving and even students got high prices for their work. Eight of the 10 most expensive paintings ever were sold between 2004 and 2008.

The art market has crashed along with everything else. We’re all thinking more about money–and we’re also thinking differently about it. Which may be shifting the spotlight to artists who have a more skeptical take on money, markets and capitalism than, say, Damien Hirst, the darling of the boom years who created a $100 million, diamond-encrusted skull. We’ve seen some impressive examples out there:

Hedge Fund by Gianni Monteleone.

Hedge Fund is an eerie work by Gianni Monteleone, one of 12 artists that Robert Jain, head of Credit Suisse global proprietary trading, commissioned to create works inspired by Wall Street terminology through KriptonART. Uh, that was before the financial meltdown. Other works in “The Color of Money: the Collision of Art and Finance,” include a painting by Mike Rollins of a stock ticker framed by a sentence from a credit-card statement: “We will allocate your payments and credits in a way that is most favorable to us;” and a Bull Market represented by a stainless steel rocket blasting off.

The New Yorker recently highlighted the Museum of Modern Art’s Song Dong show, “Waste Now.” The exhibit, said writer Andrea K. Scott, “pays homage to a more earthbound frugality.” It consists of everything the artist’s late mother collected over 50 years living in Communist China, where goods were scarce and nothing could be wasted, from pots to legless dolls to worn slippers.

Brooklyn-based artist Mark Wagner gives new meaning to the phrase “made of money,” creating intricate collages from actual currency (see one above), using up to 3,000 dollar bills per piece. His beautiful works exploit all the often-overlooked designs on our bills, and provoke you to ponder what money is for—other than spending. “The one dollar bill is the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America,” he explains on his website. “It is a ripe material: intaglio printed on sturdy linen stock, covered in decorative filigree, and steeped in symbolism and concept. Blade and glue transform it-reproducing the effects of tapestries, paints, engravings, mosaics, and computers-striving for something bizarre, beautiful, or unbelievable…”

The Money Game by Scott Moore

Scott Moore, a watercolor and oil painter in Laguna Beach, Calif., used the economic crisis as inspiration for a recent work, The Money Game. He painted it on a large scale because it’s a “big problem.” A bloated AIG piggy bank, a car and other vintage toys standing for various pieces of the economy float over a checkerboard landscape, resisting efforts to bring them down to earth.

German-Canadian artist Brian Rushton Phillips’ works may be more facile, but they fit the theme. He also uses U.S. currency, inking Mr. Monopoly with the GM logo on his morning coat over the faces of $5, $10 and $20 bills.

Tags: art, Spending and Saving, Trends and Entertainment