Boggs: A Comedy of Values

by Lawrence Weschler

In this highly entertaining book, Lawrence Weschler chronicles the antics of J. S. G. Boggs, an artist whose consuming passion is money, or perhaps more precisely, value. Boggs draws money-paper notes in standard currencies from all over the world-and tries to spend his drawings. It is a practice that regularly lands him in trouble with treasury police around the globe and provokes fundamental questions regarding the value of art and the value of money.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Biography, Biography Memoir, History, Economics

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Lawrence Weschler, a graduate of Cowell College of the University of California at Santa Cruz (1974), was for over twenty years (1981-2002) a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award (for Cultural Reporting in 1988 and Magazine Reporting in 1992) and was also a recipient of Lannan Literary Award (1998).

His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998).

His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998) Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); and Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (February 2006). Mr. Wilson was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Everything that Rises received the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.



Recent books include a considerably expanded edition of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, comprising thirty years of conversations with Robert Irwin; a companion volume, True to Life: Twenty Five Years of Conversation with David Hockney; Liza Lou (a monograph out of Rizzoli); Tara Donovan, the catalog for the artist’s recent exhibition at Boston’s Institute for Contemporary Art, and Deborah Butterfield, the catalog for a survey of the artist’s work at the LA Louver Gallery. His latest addition to “Passions and Wonders,” the collection Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative, came out from Counterpoint in October 2011.

Weschler has taught, variously, at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, and NYU, where he is now distinguished writer in residence at the Carter Journalism Institute.

He recently graduated to director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991 and was director from 2001-2013, and from which base he had tried to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, Omnivore. He is also the artistic director emeritus, still actively engaged, with the Chicago Humanities Festival, and curator for New York Live Ideas, an annual body-based humanities collaboration with Bill T. Jones and his NY Live Arts. He is a contributing editor to McSweeney’s, the Threepeeny Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review; curator at large of the DVD quarterly Wholphin; (recently retired) chair of the Sundance (formerly Soros) Documentary Film Fund; and director of the Ernst Toch Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar emigre composer. He recently launched “Pillow of Air,” a monthly “Amble through the worlds of the visual” column in The Believer.

(from www.lawrenceweschler.com)

Reviews

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in 1992 I was living in a large loft in an old industrial building in Pittsburgh’s South Side. Known as the Brew House, it was a dilapidated old brewery, built in the 1890s, and repurposed as an artists colony by an intrepid band of guerrilla artists who braved eviction notices, lack of gas, and harassment from the city to claim the old hulk and its unique spaces as their own. During my time there, Boggs was my upstairs neighbor and occasional drinking companion. In a long lifetime of finding outsized and outrageous characters for my collection of experiences, Boggs was a prize of the collection.

Boggs was always on — the character he created as much a part of his art as the unique pieces he produced. This was necessary, as performance was a large element of his art. Boggs made money. Literally. His art consisted of producing hyper realistic currency bills (though only completing one side). But that was only the beginning. With these objects in hand, he would proceed to the performance, which involved attempting to spend his art. At a restaurant, after enjoying a fine meal, he might produce one of his one hundred dollar bills, explain to his waiter that he was an artist who had created the bill, and ask if the waiter believed it was worth its face value. If successful, he would sell his work to the waiter, at face value, paying for his meal and receiving change. (The waiter, presumably, would take care of the cost out of his pocket.) What Boggs never mentioned during these performances/transactions was that he would afterwards inform those who collected his art, who would then contact the original purchaser, offering far more than the face value they had paid for the bill. Both his currency art and the elaborate performance of spending it were a sort of passion play on the philosophical idea of value itself.

Of course, Boggs’ unique artistic practice often landed him in trouble with Treasury police, who did not appreciate the distinction between Boggs’ art and counterfeiters. During the time that I knew him, he held an opening party for new work that was raided by Treasury agents who confiscated his work. For Boggs’ provocateur, mischievous mind, this just became another piece of the high stakes performance art.

Lawrence Weschler’s excellent book does a fine job of capturing the outrageous, though provoking, and mischievous subversiveness that was Boggs. Like the man himself, some of the claims made in the book are occasionally dubious, but are always compelling. Having known Boggs for a short period of time, I can attest that this biography of the man and his work does him justice, and can give it a full-throated recommendation.

[Andrew]

Few people can mine the inner workings of artists -- so often so difficult to translate to a literary, verbal format -- like Lawrence Weschler, and J.S.G. Boggs is a type example of a Weschler subject. He is something of an outcast, a provocateur who sometimes doesn't seem to know exactly what he's provoking, but who knows he's doing a good job of it, and who had a bit of an artful-dodger personality (I looked him up, he was arrested late in life as an actual Florida Man [TM] on meth and concealed-weapons charges, plus failing to appear in court). And his story is fascinating from beginning to end, complete with Weschler's long diversions in to the history of money.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

In general a very interesting book, but with a few too many stretches that focus on the history of money/banking, or "what is art?" digressions. But otherwise, a very readable story of Boggs' unique, personality, art and unavoidable legal problems.

J.S.G. Boggs made really nice drawings of banknotes - all drawn by hand but insanely detailed enough to pass for the real thing, (except for the intentional errors or changes he makes in the bills). From this "fine art" stage he then moved on to "performance art," where he actually tried to spend these drawings at their face value - not trying to pass them off as money, but explaining that these are drawings worth at least as much money as the bills they represent...too long and complex a process to describe here, but interesting in itself and one that does raise questions on money/art/value/etc. However, this process also brought him to the attention of both the U.S. and British governments, and he eventually went on trial in 1988 for, basically, forgery (although it's called something else in England). Won't spoil the result of his trial, but the last two (short) sections of the book then pick up again in 1993 and 1998, where it ends.

Sadly, when I looked up Boggs on Wiki to see what he's been up to since then, I found that he just passed away this past January at age 62 - although I could find nothing on his cause of death, or anything at all since his various death announcements; odd.

PERSONAL NOTE: I was originally interested in this story because my grandfather was also a "money artist," working for the American Bank Note Company as an engraver from the 1920's-1940's, (the ABNC did not make American money, but sold it's gorgeous notes to the rest of the world - I will include a few samples as "more photos" to this page). As a result, I began collecting ABNC's Asian banknotes when I moved to Taiwan in 1978, and they are some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

WRITING NOTE: Weschler has, for me, a fairly dry style; but he does include a few of the correctly if ridiculously over-comma'ed sentences of which I am so fond, my favorite being: "End of that case, bows all around, and, a bit later, bows all around, resumption of ours."

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll always read Lawrence Weschler. He’s one of the finest nonfiction writings that I’ve ever read. He has an seemingly endless curiosity and attracts nuts like a squirrel. BOGGS: A COMEDY OF VALUES collects a couple of articles he wrote for the New Yorker about the trials and tribulations of the title character, an artist who creates fine art of realistic drawings of currency. He’s a great draftsman but also a philosophic thinker, which puts him square in the center of the world of contemporary art. It’s a place where I can never get my bearings. I appreciate the thought that goes into the concepts behind the works, while often finding the objects that are created in the process less than interesting. But Boggs manages to hold himself between the older, more medium-based modern art and the newer, more cerebral contemporary art. His work is striking in its realism and thought-provoking in the questions it asks about value. These are not merely abstract queries, but have real-life consequences, as Boggs was put on trial in England for counterfeiting and was stalked by the Secret Service in the United States as it grappled to build its own case against him. All the while, he remained playful and inventive, using his art as literal commerce, when accepted, and tracing the transactions through receipts, change and the product or service rendered, which are framed and hung in galleries. Art isn’t an object, it’s process, and Boggs twists that process into a form that defies description.

[Mark Sisson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An easy and fascinating read. What is art. What is a reproduction. A illuminating look at the intersection of art and commerce. Watch the POV film on the same subject. It’s a bit dated, but covers the same terrain.

[Diane Madlon-Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars. Skipped pages on history of money - too boring.

[Fuzzy Gerdes · Rating 2 out of 5]

J.S.G. Boggs* is an artist whose work has often revolved around money. His best known works are hand-drawn replicas of bills which he will try to exchange for goods valued below the face value of the bill and get change for his pains--the change from the bill, the receipt, and the goods then become the work that he will sell to a dealer or collector. Because his work sorta kinda involves forgery and/or counterfeiting, is work has occasionally gotten him governmental attention, both in the US and the UK.

This slim book is expanded from a magazine profile of Boggs. There's some interesting stuff here about process as art, and some overwrought stuff about the nature of money, and some dialog that drove me crazy. I'm guessing one of two things is true: either Weschler designates as quotes things that are actually paraphrased through his own stilted style, or everyone who spoke to him really does speak in the same awkward way. So there's that.

* Doesn't that sound like a made-up name for a mad steampunk genius?

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hilariously entertaining book, whose charm is nearly impossible to convey adequately. This partial description is taken from one of the editorial reviews on Amazon.com. I include it here just to give an idea of what the book is about, and to encourage you to check it out for yourself:

James Stephen George Boggs is not a con artist, he's a talented artist who deftly renders his own currency and "spends" it. Struck by the value of money, and what paper notes represent, he draws U.S. dollar bills, English pound notes, Swiss francs, and other forms of paper money; then he barters his illustrious artwork in lieu of cash to willing merchants who agree to honor his currency for services and products. In Boggs: A Comedy of Values, Lawrence Weschler, documents Boggs's whimsical antics, offering a quirky and lively meditation on the value of currency and workmanship and a richly informative (albeit brief) social history of money.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of books about money have long hold lists at the library right now (go figure!), but somehow this isn't one of them. Maybe this title is a few years old, but the questions raised by Boggs's art (and Weschler's investigation of it) are definitely relevant to the financial situation today. The only passages that feel dated are some that deal with electronic transactions and/or credit cards. This book left me feeling enlightened (dude, money really is all in our heads!!!!!!!!), interested (especially the sections on the history of commerce/capitalism), and enraged (the courtroom scenes are seriously, seriously outrageous). Also it made me want to read every other book Lawrence Weschler has ever written. That is all.

[Mary Jo]

This is a really quirky book about the relationship between art and money, about how our culture determines the monetary value of a work of art. I had never heard of Boggs, but you gotta love someone who draws bills (American and otherwise)with slight deviations from the real thing, and only on one side of the paper. He then attempts to, often successfully, "spend" them. He makes it clear to those he does tranactions with that these are drawings,rather than actual currency. Still, they often end up worth far more than the face value of the bill would have been! A lot of the book details his adventures with banks and government agencies who are often unamused.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great to read some Weschler again -- he always expands my mind.
Here we have the story of Boggs, an artist who draws pictures of currency and then values them identically to the bill he has drawn. So if he draws a $100 bill, he "sells" it for $100 and records the transaction.
Interesting meditations on the history and role of money with Weschler's expansiveness and light touch and an engaging, larger-than-life central character in Boggs.
Some of the "Is money even real?" questions seemed like they could lead to some of the hard-money crankery we see in some politics, but the questions are interesting and this thin book is entertaining.

[Eunice · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love Lawrence Weschler. he has an eye and ear for details that allude the unobservant and conveys it with a sense of marvel and wonder that shows respect and understanding for his subjects. and his ability to make the connection between the capricious nature of the valuation of art and the currency note using the art of Boggs is brilliant. great starting point for discussions about how things are "valued".

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weschler is an unusually sympathetic journalist whose work always delights. Here he profiles J. S. G. Boggs, an artist who uses his hand-drawn currency in place of 'real' money. The transactions themselves become performance art. It is a wonderful meditation on money as a belief system and our willful confusion surrounding the buying, selling, and collecting of money and art. A powerful corrective to all the business page blather about our current financial crisis.

[ThienVinh · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book about how money's made up. it explores the relationship between money and art. really short + funny -- based on the life and work of boggs, a real-life artist who draws beautiful money and exchanges it for goods, beyond the actual face value of the forged bill.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very interesting, I enjoyed reading it. I had to read it for school, so maybe that was why at times it was difficult to get into and the writing style seemed a bit dry. The material itself is fascinating though.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote a great review for this book but Goodreads lost it.

[David Bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weschler benefits from the brilliance of his subject, who is much more memorable than the author's own insights.

[Natalie]

This wasn't a terrible book but not good enough to keep reading.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

A man who draws money.