Following the worldwide crash, the heart has gone out of art about big money.
Once seen as the equivalent of a medical examiner performing an autopsy, For the Love of God has taken its rightful place as the corpse. With $20 million in rock candy glittering on its $100 million skull, it is more symptom than diagnosis. As such, the piece is a more powerful, less didactic work of art. A year ago, some dismissed it as a frivolous joke. Anybody laughing now? Certainly not the artist, whose chances of recouping his investment continue to dwindle.
Chris Burden’s One Ton One Kilo (100 kilos of gold) slipped between cup and lip. As he learned to his sorrow, his middleman being a Ponzi schemer, toying with the root of all evil has big bite-back potential.
Art about more common currencies continues to thrive. Too bad Cornelia Parker’s 30 Pieces of Silver isn’t on view. (Detail below) This is her moment – the betrayal inherent in consumerism finds its perfect expression in this piece. Her flattened objects may appear, like us, to be heading for the slag heap. Unlike us, however, they retain their allure.
Nothing is more common than a penny. “The lowly penny,” said Jack Daws. “People don’t bend over to pick it up.”
They would if they realized he’d made it. Daws fabricated 10 18-karat gold pennies and used one in a coffee shop at the Los Angeles airport. Each cost roughly $100 to make; Daws’ gallery, Greg Kucera, is selling the remainder for $1,000 each. The Treasury Department Secret Service takes a dim view of fake money in circulation, but Daws figures he’s safe, as his penny is value added, not detracted.
Other artists blurring the boundary between art and money include Gary Hill and JSB JSG Boggs.
Regina – it’s JSG Boggs. And it is the Secret Service that investigates counterfeiting not the Treasury Department. http://www.pennylicious.com/2006/08/22/jsg-boggs-art-money/
Thanks Billy. I mistyped JSG and didn’t catch it. And 2, I knew that, about the Secret Service. I remember where Clint Eastwood worked “In the Line of Fire,” but thought, for shorthand purposes, it’s got to be the Treasury Department’s look-out eventually.