Money in Art

Selected as one of the “best art books of 2024” by Martin Gayford, The Spectator.

A visual survey featuring a curated chronological selection of 90 artworks from Pop art to now, from the witty and the political to the beautiful and the conceptual. 

From pioneers Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana and Lynn Hershman Leeson to contemporary artists Jeremy Deller, Lubaina Himid, Damien Hirst, Kerry James Marshall, MSCHF, Cornelia Parker, Grayson Perry and many more; a key work by each artist is illustrated and accompanied by a short explanatory text by art historian, David Trigg.

As an inescapable aspect of everyday life, money has appeared in the background of art throughout its history within the context of mythological, biblical and historic scenes – from Danaë and the shower of golden coins, to the 30 pieces of silver for which Judas betrayed Jesus. In the last seventy years however, as consumer culture has spread internationally, many artists have given money the centre stage in their work to reflect on various economic, political, social and symbolic concerns that relate to different currencies and formats. In some of these artworks, physical money – banknotes and coins plus cheques and credit cards – is the actual art material, used by artists to question and subvert notions of value or to examine the aesthetics of these quotidian objects. 

As the world enters an age of decentralised, virtual currencies, artists have been quick to respond to the creative potential of this new economy, from Sarah Meyohas’s creation of her own digital currency, Bitchcoin (2015), to Damien Hirst’s The Currency (2021–22) which offered 10,000 art collectors the choice between owning a physical painting or an NFT – with the corresponding element being destroyed – to explore the boundaries between art and currency, and question ideas of value.

An introductory essay sets the scene with an historical overview of money in art, whisking readers from ancient Greek pots and Renaissance paintings by Titian, Rembrandt and Gentileschi, to Dutch genre scenes, still lifes and early twentieth-century Dada collages, and the book opens with a foreword by Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England and current Prime Minister of Canada.