[Reader-list] Is painting a currency note which can not be forged unless you act illegally?

[V Ramaswamy]

Lawrence Weschler, Onward and Upward with the Arts, "VALUE I-A FOOL'S
QUESTIONS," The New Yorker, January 18, 1988, p.
33<http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1988-01-18#folio=033>

ABSTRACT
About J.S.G. Boggs, a young artist who draws pictures of currency which he
then attempts to sell for the face value of currency which he then attempts
to sell for the face value of the note depicted, usually in a retail
transaction... The receipts & change from these transactions, along with the
drawing itself (once it has been purchased by a collector)becomes the
artwork... Tells how, in 1986, he was arrested in London & charged with 4
counts of fogery & counterfeiting... "As far as I'm concerned, money is more
beautiful & highly developed & aesthetically satisfying than the print works
of all but a few modern artists. And a dollar bill is a print: it's a
unique, numbered edition..." Anthropologists have all sorts of theories
about the origins of money. One is that money had its roots in rituals of
sacrifice, but as time passed, this substitution formed a model for all
later substitutions... Boggs is by no means the 1st artist to have stumbled
into these precincts. Jackson Pollack is said to have settled his drink
bills with paintings (the lucky bartender!) & Picasso would write out
checks, then dash off smart little doodles on their backs--the checks were
seldom cashed. Writer interviews Rudy Demenga, Boggs' Basel dealer. Tells
about the events leading up to his trial in England.

......

Lawrence Weschler, Onward and Upward with the Arts, "VALUE II-CONFUSIONS AND
ANXIETIES," The New Yorker, January 25, 1988, p.
88<http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1988-01-25#folio=088>

ABSTRACT

About the trial, in England, of J.S.G. Boggs, a young American artist who
likes to draw money(that is, to create fairly exact, correct-scale color
representations of existing denominations of actual currency) & then "spend"
his drawings(that is, find people who will accept them "at face value," in
lieu of real cash, for goods & services & provide him with a receipt &
change). On Oct. 31, 1986, a show including some of his drawings at the
Young. Unknowns Gallery in London, was raided by inspectors from the
National Central Office for the Suppression of Counterfeit Currency, housed
in New Scotland Yard... Writer tells about William Harnett, a 19th century
American artist who specialized in trompe-l-oeil canvases & was arrested by
the Secret Service in 1886, partly because they believed he was the infamous
Jim the Penman. This was not long after the heyday of counterfeiting in
America. By some estimates, almost half of the circulating paper in America
at one point had been counterfeit... Boggs' solicitor, Mark Stephens, had
managed to procure for him the services of the barrister Geoffrey Robertson,
a famous advocate of civil liberties... Robertson believed the trial was
merely a futile prelude to his heart's desire: an appeal of the Boggs case
before the Strasbourg court. Tells how an English jury decided the case in
his favor.

.....

Lawrence Weschler, Onward and Upward with the Arts, "MONEY CHANGES
EVERYTHING," The New Yorker, January 18, 1993, p.
38<http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1993-01-18#folio=038>

About J.S.G. Boggs, whose "Project: Pittsburgh" involves the spending of a
million dollars of Boggs's art. It looks like money on one side, and on the
other has thumb-print spaces for five people to mark after they have
exchanged the bill. The Treasury Department does not like this idea very
much. Tells about their raid on his office at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh.

....

Lawrence Weschler, Dept. of Amplification, "A Contest of Values," The New
Yorker, May 10, 1999, p.
52<http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1999-05-10#folio=052>

About the latest legal scrapes of currency artist J.S.G. Boggs, 44... For
over a decade now, his consuming passion has been money—or, perhaps more
precisely, value. What he likes to do is draw money—actual paper notes,
one-sided but real size, in the denominations of standard currencies from
all over the world—and then try to spend those drawings. There are many
collectors avid to buy such drawings, but Boggs refuses to sell them.
Rather, he prefers to find businessmen, hoteliers, restaurateurs, motorcycle
salesmen, and the like who will accept his work in lieu of cash payment, as
part of elaborately choreographed transactions, complete with receipts and
proper change (which he is entirely willing to sell, at a hefty markup, to
collectors, who, in turn, are invited to peruse the documentation for clues
to the location of the most recent drawings)... Tells how the American
Secret Service became interested in Boggs's artistry in the late eighties...
To date, he figures he's "spent" well in excess of a million dollars' worth
of his own drawings... Describes how the government is trying to stop him,
including a trial before U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth... Boggs
describes contacting Thomas Raymond Hipschen, the lead picture engraver with
the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, in Washington. He's the incredible
artist who created the engravings for the Franklin on the new hundred-dollar
bill, the Grant on the new fifty, and the Jackson on the new twenty.....
Hipschen traded a Boggs drawing for a steel-engraved portrait of himself,
actual-money scale... "And I've now made eight impressions of this engraving
as the basis for eight one-hundred-thousand-dollar-bill drawings. That's how
I intend to pay [his legal bills]—and...that's how intend to go on paying."
Boggs smiled shyly. I suddenly realized that whether or not the Supreme
Court agreed to entertain this particular suit of Boggs's—and if it did, no
matter how it ruled—the loser was likely to go on mounting fresh challenges,
ad infinitum, since this was a case in which both sides were in a position
to go on covering all their costs simply by printing fresh money.

.............