Money Talks by ACC Art Books

Money Talks: Art, Society & Power 9 August 2024 to 5 January 2025

Shailendra Bhandare, Joe Cribb, Graham Dyer, Shreya Gupta, Michael Gründner, Richard Kelleher, Sydney Smith, Foteini

Valeonti and Matthew Winterbottom have asserted their moral rights to be identified as the authors of this work.

British Library Cataloguing in Publications Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN : 978-1-910807-62-0

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Edited by Lizzy Silverton

Catalogue designed by Stephen Hebron

Printed and bound in the UK by Gomer Press

Frontispiece: First set of definitive coins of King Charles III, 2023, United Kingdom. Photo: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Courtesy Shailendra Bhandare.

For further details of Ashmolean titles please visit: www.ashmolean.org/shop

Exhibition supported by:

Mr Barrie and Mrs Deedee Wigmore

The Patrons of the Ashmolean Museum

Mr E. Penser

We are most grateful to all our lenders who are supporting our exhibition:

The Royal Mint Museum

Collection Banque de France

Money Museum of the Austrian National Bank (Österreichische Nationalbank)

National Portrait Gallery, London

Tate

De La Rue

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Trustees of the British Museum

New College Oxford

Corpus Christi College Oxford

Jesus College Oxford

The National Gallery, London

The Postal Museum

ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland

Collection Dr Robert B. Feldman

Baptist Coelho

Martin Jennings

Chris Levine Studio

Martín Nadal and César Escudero Andaluz

Courtesy Grayson Perry, Paragon | Contemporary Editions Ltd and Victoria Miro

Stephen Sack

Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg/Amsterdam

Courtesy Susan Stockwell & Patrick Heide Contemporary Art

Courtesy Larva Labs

Courtesy Rare Pepe Foundation

Courtesy Sarah Meyohas

Courtesy Alex Estorick and Ana Caballero

Joe

King Edward VIII and the Coinage that Never Was

Graham Dyer

‘Numismatibus ornatum’: The Decorative Use of Ancient 51 and Modern Coins on Renaissance and Baroque Silver

Matthew Winterbottom Manifest Munificence: Forms and Features of Goddess

Shri Lakshmi in Art and on Money

Shailendra Bhandare

‘So little appeal …’ : Austrian Banknotes of the Fin de Siècle

Michael Gründner

– Art –

Richard

a Continent: Banknote Art in Colonial Africa

Shailendra Bhandare

Coin of the Realm: Contemporary Money-Art

in Global Circulation

Sydney Smith

Kingdom and their ambivalent relationship (fig.8).58 She gave two representative figures the money symbols as hair, showing them about to kiss with their eyes closed and drawing back in shock when they open their eyes and recognise the reality of their relationship.

An actual coin is the subject of Stephen Sack’s photograph, Euro Mask. Photographic artist Stephen Sack has long had an interest in creating images of worn and corroded coins and other forms of money.59 This piece (fig.9), formed from a twenty-cent euro piece, is one of his series of Euro Masks, and complements another of his series, Euro Meltdown. All the coins in these series have been damaged while being burnt with rubbish. Sack rescued them from the garbage incinerator, an act of what he terms ‘future archaeology’, and has used them to create these two series of mysterious images. This example has been melted into a face, which seems to express the distress of the euro crisis of 2009–17, when the fragile economies of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal all faced the possibility of damaging the euro monetary system. Sack’s recent intervention, using ancient dolphin-shaped coins from the Black Sea region, titled Creatures of the

Cat.97 Bank of England 10-pound note defaced with a rubber stamp featuring Marie Stopes, designed and applied by Paula Stevens-Hoare, 2014, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Fig.8 Money and Emotions, Erica Steenkamp, 2019

Black Sea, makes a powerful statement against the war in Ukraine, tapping on the multi-layered association of the imagery he creates (cat.111).

Each of these artists has responded to the aesthetic and symbolic value of monetary objects in different ways as part of the modern movement of creating money-related art. This phenomenon has been examined in detail by the neo-Marxist commentator Max Haiven, particularly the ways in which artists have responded to the relationship between money and art, both as an appealing topic for wealthy art collectors, as well as a protest against the corruption of art by money and of society by their combination.60 In the five works detailed above many strands of intent can be discerned: protest, satirical commentary, and a pure joy in the aesthetic qualities of monetary forms, designs, and traditions. What is clear is that they approach the relationship between art and money in a playful and visually engaging way, each artist bringing value out of this relationship, even though barely bringing any money into their pockets.

Money and art as synonymous metaphors

Barely a week goes by without the news telling us of another record price paid for a work of art. In the popular mind, art has become synonymous with money; a metaphor for disposable wealth. The art being acquired at such high prices

Above: Fig.9 Euro Mask, Stephen Sack, 2017

Below: Cat.111 Creatures of the Black Sea, Stephen Sack, 2022, Private collection

King Edward VIII and the Coinage that Never Was Graham Dyer

The proposed coinage of King Edward VIII (1894–1972) is one of the most fascinating episodes in twentieth-century British numismatic history. Quite apart from the survival of excessively rare trial and pattern pieces, whose occasional appearance at auction always causes excitement, by the intervention of the king himself it raised serious questions about the role of the monarch, about the importance of numismatic tradition, and about the nature and significance of the designs that accompanied the royal portrait. These questions having been bravely wrestled with and brought to a resolution, the abdication of the king in December 1936 then forestalled the issue in the United Kingdom of any coins with his portrait and in his name.

The personal involvement of the king, recalled by him some years later in surprising detail in A King’s Story, undoubtedly became a key factor in the preparation of the new coinage. The real burden of the day, however, was to fall on Sir Robert Johnson (1874–1938; fig.10), the long-serving Deputy Master of the Mint. Forthright and energetic, providing leadership and direction, he had transformed the Mint since his arrival at the beginning of 1922. He had managed to keep the Mint busy and its skilled workforce intact during the difficult years of the Depression. And from the start, much to his credit, was a laudable desire that coins should be better designed. To this end he established, with royal approval, the Royal Mint Advisory Committee, an independent and distinguished body to advise on new designs for coins and medals. It was a committee that he valued and consulted regularly throughout the troubled and controversial events of 1936 (Table 1).

The royal portrait for coins of the United Kingdom

The most familiar part of the story concerns the approval of an uncrowned portrait for the British coinage, its familiarity the result of the controversy created by the king’s firm conviction that the features of the left side of his face were superior to those of the right. That the parting of his hair was on the left seems to have been the crucial factor and, wanting always to appear to his best advantage, he was adamant that his coins should show him facing to the left. But by doing so he would be breaking a tradition dating back to the seventeenth century whereby successive

Opposite: Detail of cat.9 Pattern 5-pound coin awaiting final approval, December 1936

Below: Fig.10 Sir Robert Johnson, Deputy Master of the Royal Mint, 1922–38

Opposite: Detail of fig.35 100-crown note, dated 2 January 1910, Austro-Hungarian Bank, OeNB Money Museum

‘So little appeal …’ Austrian Banknotes of the Fin de Siècle

Michael Gründner

Unfortunately, these sketches … are so one-sided and have so little appeal that one can neither accept them nor encourage the gentlemen to draw new ones.81

This unflattering verdict was not directed at a pair of amateur street artists, or at draughtsmen new to their craft, but at two artists who had already made a name for themselves in late nineteenth-century Vienna: Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) and Franz Matsch (1861–1942). And they were not the only prominent artists who found themselves rejected by the same client. Ten years later, Koloman Moser (1868–1918) and Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) fared little better with a similar project. But which works of art prompted such a harsh verdict? And who presumed to pass this judgment on some of the leading artists of the fin de siècle?

Before we dive into answering these questions, a short digression into the background of the Art Nouveau movement in Austria is required.

Art nouveau

The international art phenomenon Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil in German, which emerged at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, had numerous centres. In German-speaking countries these were Munich, Darmstadt, and notably Vienna. The latter was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and an economic, political, social, and cultural hub, making it a magnet for intellectuals and artists alike. In this city, they found inspiration, mingled with like-minded people, and hoped to reel in new commissions. With the advent of the industrial revolution in the mid-nineteenth century, the opportunities to land a job increased, with bourgeois families competing with the traditional elites of the imperial court, the nobility, and the church to flaunt their newfound wealth. The upper middle class was often more open-minded towards modern ideas than the elites of the old order, thus offering aspiring artists the opportunity to break new ground.

In April 1897, led by Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867–1908), several avant-garde Austrian artists left the conservatively oriented Genossenschaft der bildenden Künstler Wiens (Association of Austrian Artist). They founded the Vereinigung bildender Künstler Wiener Secession (Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession) – thus the Viennese Jugendstil is also called the Vienna Secession – and became the forerunners of Art Nouveau in Austria. The Secessionists broke away from the overloaded and

a perforated line separating a detachable seven and a half cent section – the message being that the Diefenbaker Government had caused the Canadian dollar to devalue against its US counterpart to this degree. This form of visual trope was central to the Guerilla Girls’ protest piece on equal pay for women. The groups’ accusatory graphic activism of the late 1980s and early 1990s used damning statistics to make their point and mark moments of protest against the oppression and marginalisation of women. In their classic infographic style, the 1985 piece, Women in America Earn Only 2/3 Of What Men Do (cat.98) uses the simple conceit of taking a well-known everyday object – a one-dollar bill – and adding a dotted line. This clever arrangement read from left to right illustrates the disparity in earnings between men and women in the US, and read from right to left shows the disparity regarding the earnings of women artists against their male counterparts.

As the self-appointed ‘conscience of the art world’, the Guerilla Girls continue to point out the mutually determining forces of sexist and racist structures in art exhibitions and theory.135 Coins too have been used to make the point about equal pay for women. Taking inspiration from the ‘Votes for Women’ stamped

Cat.98 Women in America Earn Only 2/3 Of What Men Do, Guerrilla Girls, 1985, Tate, London

pennies of the early twentieth century, and the 2010 film Made in Dagenham, Paula Stevens-Hoare defaced contemporary 50-pence pieces to highlight the gender pay gap (fig.43).

Other monetary interventions include The Pay Gap Pound, which was developed by the advertising agency Mr President and the creative network SheSays as part of the Equal Pay Day Campaign. The convincing imitations, called The Pay Gap Pound, were created to remind people that on average women earn just 82 pence for every pound earned by men. Equal Pay Day in the UK falls on 20 November as it is from this day until the end of the year that women essentially work for free. Money is a powerful medium to use when highlighting inequality in pay, but another aspect of gender inequality is in who is represented on banknotes. Notable Women by Paula Stevens-Hoare is a series of ten-, twenty-, and 50-pound notes over-stamped in response to the discontinuation of the five-pound note featuring Elizabeth Fry – the only woman represented on the back of a Bank of England note. This imbalance is found globally, with just fifteen per cent of world banknotes featuring images of women. Using stamps and different colour inks Stevens-Hoare chose notable women to replace the males on the reverses; Marie Stopes (1880–1958) for Charles Darwin (1808–1882) on the ten-pound note, Rosalind Frankin (1920–1958) for Adam Smith (1723–1790) on the twenty-pound note (cat.97) and Sarah Guppy (1770–1852) and Tilly Shilling (1909–1990) for Matthew Boulton and James Watt (1736–1819) on the 50-pound note.

Fig.43 50-pence coin stamped ‘EQUAL PAY FOR WOMEN’, Paula StevensHoare, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Cat.97 Notable Women: Rosalind Franklin, Paula Stevens-Hoare, 2014, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Opposite: Cat.113 Economy, Knowledge and Surveillance in the Age of the Cryptocene, Martín Nadal and César Escudero Andaluz, 2018

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Money, and Art

Foteini Valeonti

In recent years, a new medium has emerged at the meeting point of art and money. NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), or crypto collectibles, attracted the attention of mainstream media in March 2021 when a NFT by digital artist Mike, also known as Beeple, was auctioned at Christie’s for 69 million dollars.166 Titled Everydays: The first 5000 days, it featured a digital image depicting a collage of 5,000 individual artworks. Although it was the first ‘purely digital artwork (NFT) ever offered at Christie’s’, it was not the artist’s first NFT artwork to be sold for millions.167 A month earlier, in February of that year, Beeple’s piece CROSSROADS was sold for 6.6 million dollars, whereas the month prior, in December of 2020, Beeple’s NFT sales exceeded three million dollars.168 Following the meteoric rise of NFTs in early 2021, curious members of the growing NFT community started exploring the potential of this new medium just as skeptics were pointing out the technology’s flaws. At the time, the environmental impact of NFTs was arguably their greatest weakness, and was inherited from Ethereum, the blockchain network where NFTs were invented and where the vast majority of them are still traded. Until the Autumn of 2022, Ethereum’s energy consumption was indeed substantial. However, a major technological upgrade of Ethereum on 15 September 2022, known as ‘The Merge’, dramatically reduced the blockchain’s energy consumption, and subsequently that of NFTs to the levels of standard computing.169 Yet, criticism of NFTs remains fierce, reflected in articles examining ‘why do people hate NFTs so much’.170 Exploring the medium’s strengths and weaknesses, which have been evolving over the last few years, this essay aims to contribute to the ongoing debate surrounding NFTs, focusing on the convergence of crypto collectibles, culture, and money.

What is an NFT?

NFTs are a new medium that introduces digital scarcity, enabling uniqueness of objects and ownership in the digital realm. Crypto collectibles are utilised in multiple industries, from finance and logistics to sports and gaming.171 In the context of culture, NFTs can be described as the digital equivalent of limited editions, whereby the print copy is substituted with a digital copy (e.g. a JPEG image) and the signature is not a physical one but a digital one ciphered on the blockchain.172 The key difference between limited editions and NFTs, however, is that whereas the former rarely compete in value with paintings or sculptures, NFTs have the potential to do just that. Indeed, Beeple’s Christie’s auction ranked as the third highest in history by a living artist, surpassing Gerhard Richter (b.1932), as well as most auctions by famous Old Masters, including Raphael (1483–1520) and

Cat.63

Queen Elizabeth II (‘Equanimity’), 2012

Chris Levine (b.1960) and Robert Munday (b.1958)

Rosaline Wong Gallery, Jesus College and HomeArt

This portrait of Queen Elizabeth II (1926–2022) by the Canadian artist Chris Levine and holographer Robert Munday, of UK company ‘Spatial Imaging’ was specially commissioned in 2004 by the States of Jersey and the Jersey Heritage Trust to commemorate 800 years of Jersey’s allegiance to the Crown. In later years it was used to commemorate other events related to the queen’s long reign. In 2012, it featured on a commemorative 100-pound banknote marking the queen’s Golden Jubilee. Equanimity, is the first officially commissioned holographic-stereographic portrait of the queen, or of any member of the royal family.

Director of the Jersey Heritage Trust, Jonathan Carter, commented of the commission:

As Jersey has a long and fascinating relationship with The Crown, we wanted to commission a Royal Portrait that not only reflects this history but is also a contemporary iconic image of distinction. By presenting our heritage in this contemporary form, the portrait will symbolise and celebrate Jersey, its people and the future.

Light is central to the works of photographer Chris Levine. He suggested that the holographic stereogram be lit with blue light to enhance the sense of ‘equanimity’ – the ‘quality of being calm and even tempered’. Robert Munday is a pioneer in holography and lenticular imaging. In 1985, Munday set up the world’s first post-graduate degree in creative holography at the Royal College of Art, and created some of the first computergenerated holographic stereogram artworks.

The three-dimensional portrait was the result of two sittings at Buckingham Palace in November 2003 and March 2004, which together lasted for around two and a half hours. During this time approximately 8,000 images of the queen were made. The camera would need to reset for about eight seconds after each pass and Levine advised the queen to rest her eyes in these moments. Another ethereal image of the queen, the Lightness of Being, which shows her with her eyes closed, was produced years later from the images taken when she was resting between the many shots.

These photographs were taken using a specially designed 3D camera system, with a moving camera that could take a series of captures from different positions. The ‘Video Images with Parallax’, or ‘VIP’, system was used to record the parallax image sequences, from which the holographic stereogram portrait was created. After the second sitting, Munday chose one of the parallax image sequences, which was then enhanced, to give way to the final portrait.

148 money talks

It was Munday’s decision to go with a simple and realistic portrait to emphasise the queen’s majesty and to create the impression of meeting, or knowing, her when looking into her eyes. Levine chose her outfit – a dark blue velvet dress, a single string of white pearls, and the George IV (1762–1830) Diamond Diadem, on recommendation from Buckingham Palace. The diadem was made for the coronation of George IV in 1820 and was subsequently worn by Queen Victoria (1819–1901) and Queen Elizabeth II at their coronations. Munday suggested using a white cape and the Personal Assistant and Dresser to The Queen came up with an appropriate selection. From this emerged the famed ‘hologenic’ white ermine stole that can be seen in the portrait.

The final print consisted of a lenticular 3D stereogram, which was printed in Munday’s holography studio. It was unveiled by the then Prince Charles at Mont Orgueil Castle in St Helier, Jersey, where it remains as part of the permanent collection. Another lenticular image was depicted on limited edition gold and silver medals issued by the Royal Mint to mark the queen’s eightieth birthday. Many more versions of Equanimity have since been created and displayed at other venues. In 2011, the Jersey Post commissioned Munday to create a portrait for a stamp marking the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. These stamps were the world’s first to have a threedimensional holographic portrait of a head of state on them.

Queen Elizabeth II was one of the most photographed and painted figures. Her image is familiar worldwide, largely through money that bears her portraits. No less than 33 issuing authorities the world over have issued banknotes with her image and there are 31 different ‘monetary’ portraits showing her in different stages in her long life. This makes the late Queen one of the most recognisable faces in the world.