J. S. G. Boggs
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James Stephen George Boggs is a real American artist, best known for his hand-drawn, one-sided depictions of U.S. banknotes (known as "Boggs notes") and his various "Boggs bills" he draws for use in his performances.
He spends his "Boggs notes" only for their face value. If he draws a $100 bill, he exchanges it for $100 worth of goods. He then sells any change he gets, the receipt, and sometimes the goods he purchased as his "artwork." If an art collector wants a Boggs note, he must track it down himself. Boggs will tell a collector where he spent the note, but he does not sell them directly.[citation needed]
His works are held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.[1], The Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.C., N.Y., The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Babson College, Wellesley, MA, The Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL, The Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL, The Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS, and The British Museum, London, England, to name but a few. Boggs and his work are chronicled in BOGGS - A Comedy of Values, by Lawrence Weschler, published by University of Chicago Press.
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[edit] Early life
Born Steven Litzner in Woodbury, New Jersey, U.S.A., in 1955, Boggs' mother, Marlene Dietrich Hildebrandt, divorced her first husband, Steven A. Litzner, and took her young son along when she ran away with the carnival. After a brief second marriage to Richard McMahon, Marlene married James Henry Boggs on December 23, 1961, in Tampa, FL, and settled into a small, modest three bedroom home not far from the Tampa Airport. The young "Boggs" was soon signing his name "James Stephen Boggs" (changing the spelling to "Stephen" because he disliked people shortening his name to "Steve"). The practice was ended after an attempt at formal adoption failed when contested in court in New Jersey by his biological fater. Boggs' adoption was delayed for a long period, before being adopted in April, 1979. The artist chose the name as that by which he would be addressed, and henceforth began introducing himself as "Boggs."
[edit] Public response
Any person who gets a Boggs note can usually sell it for much more than its face value: a $10 Boggs note may be worth more than $1000. Any person who knows about Boggs is likely to accept a Boggs note; for this reason, Boggs prefers to spend his art with people who are unfamiliar with his work. He likes people to make a conscious choice to accept art instead of money, and their knowing how much money his art is actually worth spoils it. He views these "transactions" as a type of performance art, but the authorities often view them with suspicion. Boggs aims to have his audience question and investigate just what it is that makes "money" valuable in the first place. He steadfastly denies that he is a counterfeiter or forger, maintaining that a good-faith transaction between informed parties is certainly not fraud, even if the item transacted happens to resemble negotiable currency.
[edit] Later works
Recently, Boggs has moved on beyond his hand-drawn works and embraced digital technology, creating his latest works on the computer. These works resemble paper money in fundamental ways but add subtle twists. One of his better-known works is a series of bills done for the Florida United Numismatists' annual convention. Denominations from $1 to $50 (and perhaps higher) feature designs taken from the reverse sides of contemporary U.S. currency, modified slightly through the changing of captions (notably, "The United States of America" is changed to "Florida United Numismatists" and the denomination wording is occasionally replaced by the acronym "FUN") and visual details (the mirroring of Monticello on the $2, the Supreme Court building, as opposed to the U.S. Treasury, on the $10 and an alternate angle for the White House on the $20). They were printed in bright orange on one side and featured Boggs's autograph and thumbprint on the other. The total run was several hundred and they command a modest premium but not as much as his older, hand-drawn works.
Other money art that he has designed include the mural "All the World's a Stage", roughly based on a Bank of England Series D 20-pound note and featuring Shakespearean themes, as well as banknote-sized creations that depict Boggs's ideas as to what U.S. currency should look like. A $100 featuring Harriet Tubman is one known example.
[edit] Arrests
Boggs was first arrested for counterfeiting in England in 1986, but was acquitted. He was arrested for a second time in Australia in 1989, but also acquitted. Since 1990 some of his work and personal effects have been confiscated by the United States Secret Service Counterfeiting Division although no legal case has been brought against him.[2]
[edit] See also
Other money artists include
- William Harnett
- John F. Peto
- Tim Prusmack
- John Haberle, who made trompe l'oeil paintings of U.S. currency in the 1880s
- Otis Kaye, who made both paintings similar to Harnett, and also actual-size pen-and-ink drawings similar to Boggs's, from the 1920s to the 1950s
- Cesar Tresobares
- Christopher Westhoff
Also related is
- Emanuel Ninger (Jim the Penman), who drew counterfeit notes, with the intent to defraud, by hand in the 1880s
Additional contemporary "money artists" include Stephen Barnwell (ANTARCTICA Dream-Dollars), Franck Medina (State of Kamberra) and Cedric Mnich (Gordon Gekko's).
[edit] References
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This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (October 2008) |
- Boggs: a Comedy of Values A good, though slightly outdated, reference on Boggs by Lawrence Weschler.
- Shapinski's Karma, Bogg's Bills, and other Truth-Life Tales Another Lawrence Weschler book, which is based on his original late '80s articles in The New Yorker profiling Boggs and his work.
- The Justice Game This Geoffrey Robertson book has a chapter on conducting the defence of Boggs in his British criminal trial.
