ASHMOLEAN EXHIBIT REVIEW: MONEY TALKS

 

The serpentine flash of a dollar sign, in Andy Warhol's black and gold canvas, opens this fascinating show. Brusque, abrupt; splashes of paint scattering around it like cartoon speed marks – the motif seems to drive towards the future. That it is priceless today, and now looks so very evidently handmade, probably goes against the spirit in which it was churned out of Warhol's Factory back in 1981. It represents what it shows, but by now exponentially – the most recognisable symbol of wealth in the world.

Dollar Sign is an ideal start to an exhibition that explores money through art. Depictions of money are legion, and there are plenty on display: Rembrandt's etching of The Goldweigher with his fatly bagged coins; James Gillray's caricature of Pitt the Younger with a stomach full of sovereigns, belching paper money from his mouth; a sharp 1933 painting by the overlooked English artist Charles Spencelayh. An old man holds a 10 shilling note up to the light only to discover it has no watermark. It's the standard Great Depression fraud. His eyes are already dim with dismay.

But this show goes deeper into the evergreen relationship between art and money. For money, after all, is in itself both an image and an object. It might be an ancient scrap of paper inscribed with fluid Arabic calligraphy or a Roman coin bearing an emperor's tough profile (startling drawings by Rubens, based on coins he acquired on Italian trips, would be transformed by the Flemish master into portraits of Nero, Vespasian and Vitellius for his Antwerp house).

But even these coins, no matter how functional, start out as works of art. One of the most enthralling sequences here shows all the many different portraits of Edward VIII made to be adapted for his head on a coin; some deselected because they showed him as too young or in expensive evening dress. Edward wanted the obverse images to appear more "modern", favouring, among others, designs by John Francis Kavanagh, head of sculpture at Leeds College of Art.

It is startling to learn that the so-called Dressed Head of Elizabeth II, as sculpted by Arnold Machin RA in 1966, is the most reproduced image in history (300bn copies to date). And here it is, the original shallow relief of the young queen in her crown, as subtle but not as characterful as Martin Jennings's profile head of her careworn son Charles III from 2023. The curators are surely right to wonder whether the move to virtual money will lessen this crownless portrait's impact.

 

To read the complete article, see:
Money Talks: Art, Society and Power review – a vivid, revelatory look at two sides of the same coin (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/article/2024/aug/18/money-talks-art-society-and-power-ashmolean-museum-oxford-review-there-are-two-sides-to-everything)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
EXHIBIT: MONEY TALKS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n28a20.html)

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