Currency

Common Currency

In the spring of 1994, struggling with the choice between making art or making money, I found myself compelled to pursue a new art project -- making art out of money. I admit that when faced with money problems, making art out of money instead of making money from art may not be unlike a mad man who has begun to laugh uncontrollably at insurmountable problems. I often find myself frustrated, depressed and overwhelmed by the problem of money. I just don't understand it. I am an artist, and like most artists I want to create things which are interesting, important and valued. Now, years after quitting the day job, I find myself in debt with an enormous portfolio of drawings, paintings and sculptures which I am sure are valuable but which do not bring me money.

It is the distinction between intrinsic value and commodity value and the lack of an acceptable exchange rate between the two that causes me the most trouble. I heard a story that late in his life Picasso signed his name to a bill thereby making it worth more to the collectors around him than it had been before. While I would like to believe that I, and indeed all artists, have similar value-bestowing powers, few of us have collectors to validate them. I have yet to sell a painted dollar because I have yet to become a commodity. I am also reluctant to become one. I like living a hermit's life where I can garden, raise fish and ducks and per sue my art at my own pace. To become an extrovert, too move to one of our regional or national art capitals in order to increase my work's commodity value, would be to me a sign of failure rather than success.

My principle concern is with aesthetic quality – the ability of art to provoke or tap into an experience that can't be described but leaves one richer as a result. It is hard to explain the value of such experiences. I've argued until four a.m. with engineers over the value of art. "Yes it is valuable, but is it as valuable as other things?" I have never felt equipped to tackle such arguments. It is like arguing that awareness is more important than food and shelter. What use is food if one is not aware, what good is awareness if you are dead. This is the choice of the starving artist – a choice that should not have to be made.

When I decided to paint on currency, I had decided to see money in terms of its inherent aesthetic qualities. Like most people I have handled currency for years without really looking at it. Now, by using acrylic paints to block out some elements and highlight others or overlay the whole with elements of my own, I have become aware of how really well designed they actually are. They contain a well-proportioned classical beauty that make a wonderful point of departure. The backs of one dollar bills are particularly interesting. I have been aware that it was steeped in Masonic symbolism, but until recently had never taken a compass and ruler to one to try to uncover the extent to which non-Euclidean geometry has been used to proportion the note. Ad quadratum, ad triangulum, the Golden Section, all the classic forms are there.

Bills are also painted on a paper that has a durability and dimensional stability uncommon among even the finest art papers. This paper has a distinct tactile quality that remains in the finished painted dollar–at least when left unframed. We all know the feel of money from years of association with it. When holding painted money all those associations, our desires and frustrations, rise to the surface. It is real money. It may now be worth more than a dollar, and while how much more is unclear, it retains an indisputable level of commodity value.

Painting on currency raises some additional questions beyond aesthetics and the inquiry into values. Most people I have shown my painted dollars to either ask me, "Is this legal?" or tell me outright, "This is illegal." One person offered me the additional warning that it was defacing the great seal that would get me into trouble. If what I am doing does prove to be illegal, somehow that would seem to be appropriate. So much crime rises out of poverty and desperation, why not mine. Actually, while I have not researched the case law regarding the defacement of currency, I do believe I am within my rights. When the supreme court ruled recently that flag burning was a form of political speech protected by the first amendment, it became safe to assume that no national symbols are, as symbols, protected from desecration.

Perhaps currency is a special case. Unlike a flag, a note or coin represents a tangible commodity value. Perhaps it is the value which needs protecting. We certainly don't want to shake people's faith in the dollar. Destroying a dollar is not simply an insult to the nation, but an assault on that most sacred of institutions – capitalism. But what constitutes defacement or the destruction of value? Bills are regularly worn out, torn, stained, washed and dried, doodled upon and written on in the course of their natural lives. None of this affects a bill's value. There is even a department within the Treasury whose sole job is to reconstruct the value of currency damaged as a result of everything from fire to being buried in a tin can in damp soil for years. Bills are painstakingly analyzed. And if a sufficient residual amount remains, it will be replaced with new bills. the owner of damaged currency is not held criminally liable, although if a bill is damaged beyond reconstruction, you could imagine the loss of the value as a fine.

Perhaps it is a question of intent. If in the course of performing a magic trick I tear a note in half and am unable to restore it at the end of the trick, perhaps that is the crime. If it is a crime, would the application of scotch tape warrant dropping the charge? I suppose if I start tearing up all my money and then insist it be replaced with new notes for me to tear up, I might be charged, if nothing else, with being annoying.

There is another side to deliberate defacement to consider. One can occasionally find at art fairs, coins which have been fashioned into jewelry. I myself have been wearing in a belt buckle for over twenty years a silver dollar give to me by my grandfather. In all that time only one person has criticized me, pointing out that the coins numismatic value is being eroded. This individual was under the curious impression that the coin would be of more value to me had it been put away out of sight in a box for twenty years.

Of course, destroying numismatic value is not the same as destroying fungibility. When a jeweler cuts dimes into little open work portraits of Liberty or Eisenhower for a pair of earrings, their fungibility might be destroyed but their commodity value is increased. I have been told by jewelers that it is value adding, as opposed to simple value destruction, which makes such jewelry legal.

But how do we decide when value has been added or destroyed? I have a few nickels I shot with a .22 caliber rifle as a boy. They are no longer fungible and have no commodity value as jewelry, but I have valued them more than ordinary nickels for a very long time. For me these nickels, like my belt buckle, have a certain talismanic value. These nickels were shot back when guns and their effects were new to me. If I were to go out tomorrow and shoot nickels again, it wouldn't be the same. There is a certain quality or value that depends on the reality of the thing. If created with a genuine sense of inquiry or need for artistic expression, then my humblest doodles will possess more of this quality, more intrinsic value, than the most masterful forgeries or mechanical reproductions of the most famous paintings in the world.

As an artist being true to myself and my work, am I even capable of destroying value? Recently I took a dollar bill, soaked it in bleach, splattered it with paint and punched it with a thousand jagged little holes. Is it now worth more or less than a dollar? If I set fire to a dollar, crumple the ashes into a plastic envelope, frame, exhibit and sell those ashes, has value been created or destroyed? These works are not about decorations or visual aesthetics, but take on value from being part of my inquiry into value. If after reading this, someone else does the same thing to a dollar without the same level of involvement, then it won't have the same value. It might sell for more–particularly if they are better at self-promotion and marketing than I, but it won't have the same reality. Within the context of my current work, if I throw the ashes of a burnt dollar to the wind, there will still remain some conceptual value that is worth more than a dollar. That value being in part the affirmation of life and art over the value of the dollar. Arguably, if the Federal Reserve decides to increase the money supply, the resulting inflation would do more to destroy the value of a dollar than anything I, acting as an artist, could ever do.

Bringing up the Federal Reserve brings up another more tangible question of value. If I take my dollars to the Federal Reserve bank they agree to pay exactly absolutely nothing. They may replace a damaged note with a new one, but they have nothing of value–no gold or silver, no cheeseburger or fries–with which to back it up. Despite what it says, a Federal Reserve note is not legal tender as originally defined by the constitution. As if to underscore the point, the Reserve has been minting one ounce silver coins with a face value of one dollar which currently retails for about nine Federal Reserve notes plus tax. Perhaps these are the dollars which should be protected from defacement. Of course, the important thing to most people is not what the Federal Reserve will offer for a note but what their local shop keepers will offer. Besides, with the increasing use of checks, credit cards and electronic currency transfers, the printed note becomes increasingly superfluous.

The fact that I am painting on Federal Reserve notes and not gold-backed dollars does put a small twist in my thinking. While a note is in my possession, do I own it outright or do I only own the value represented by it? Between receiving it as change at one store and spending it at another, was it ever really mine or did it remain simply a value marker, like a poker chip, borrowed from the Federal Reserve? I would not presume to own the bank that electronically stores value deposited in my name. If I sell a painted dollar, does the collector own the note or only the paint and the value represented by the note? Is the note subject to repossession?

The question of ownership may be central to what I am allowed to do with notes while they are in my possession. If I start writing messages on them and then re-circulate them, would this constitute graffiti on a public edifice? What if I get a rubber stamp that reads, "Buy art. It is worth more than this," and then I stamp it inconspicuously in green ink on the back of every note that passes through my hands for the next twenty years. Am I a felon yet? I've no more altered the notes fungibility than do bank tellers that put numbers on the top note of a stack of bills to keep track of them. What if Pepsi began printing its logo on the backs of one dollar bills with the words, "Good for one 16 ounce Pepsi at participating retailers." If it is ruled such advertising is illegal, perhaps I could get Pepsi in trouble by printing their logo for them. I imagine all sorts of people and corporations could stamp all manner of messages on dollar bills. Truly an anarchist's dream.

Maybe this is all just a desperate cry for attention–an effort to increase my own commodity value. While I am interested in anarchist messages, aesthetics and intrinsic value, I am also tired of being poor. Living like a hermit might be cheap, but it is not free. I live in a area with a population base of over 100,000 people whose educations and incomes are well above the national average, yet there is not a single full time modern artist here able to support him or her self through the sale of their work. In the last ten years, this area has enjoyed a housing construction boom with most units in the $100,000 and up range, yet the owners of virtually all those new homes will pay more in one month for their houses than they will spend in their entire lives on works of art. The problem is not just local. Last year investors earned four trillion dollars in capital gains from the stock market, yet we elected congressmen who want to cut taxes on capital gains and zero out cultural funding. Not only does France spend more on culture than we do, I recently read that the city of Berlin alone spends more on culture than our entire Federal government. What we as a people have decided is or is not valuable, has truly become a national social disease. The situation begs for some kind of cry from artists, however desperate or futile it might be.

(Note: as of 2006 I have actually sold three painted dollars. Several others have been given as gifts and the financial offices of the University of Washington have 9 on loan.)

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