Let's talk about money!
Artists on 💸💸💸
Over on the Substack chat, we’ve been discussing our book club pick: How Artists Make Money & Money Makes Artists by David Berry. Less publicly, I’ve been watching Industry on HBO with my mouth open in shock at the antics. I wonder how ghastly the art world would look on screen?
A taboo subject, the art world mostly avoids conversations about money. Price lists are sent without dollar amounts (baffling!). The presence of trust funds is whispered about, but never confirmed. Market reports are tracked using vague percentages that don’t fully capture the reality of artists' finances.
Here are some artists who tackle money in the art world head-on:
Sean Weisgerber
A playful series that uses the semiotics of price stickers to correlate with the price of a painting. Sean Weisgerber’s ongoing series, Price Per Square Inch, visualizes the business of art and the artist’s role as a worker.
Sarah Meyohas
In a 2016 performance titled Stock Performance, Sarah Meyohas day-traded equities live from a gallery and translated each price move onto canvases to emphasize the individual’s role in the market. As I’m writing this, I barely know what half these words (day-traded equities??) mean…
Jonathan Monk
Buy Jonathan Monk dinner! The artist’s ongoing series directly negates the adage of a “starving artist”. The premise is brilliant in its simplicity: after a dinner out, Monk draws on the receipt and sells the artwork for the price of the meal.
MSCHF
During Art Basel Miami in 2022, MSCHF set up an ATM Leaderboard that tracked the balances of anyone who opted to insert their card and pin. It became something of a competition, with wealthy millionaires jockeying for top spot. Men couldn’t resist mansplaining to me all weekend, explaining how it actually isn’t smart to hold money in a chequing account and not investments. When I went to participate, I realized I had left my wallet at home in Toronto, which says something about my relationship with money.
Andrea Fraser
Andrea Fraser is one of my favourite artists, particularly for the way she critiques art institutions from within. Her piece 2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics documents the reported political contributions made by trustees of more than 125 art museums in the 2016 election cycle.
🤑 🤑 Bonus Art! 🤑 🤑
A couple of years ago, Keiran and I hailed a cab after a concert, only to be targeted in a taxi scam. Essentially, they swapped our debit card for a dummy card and had our PIN from the card reader, allowing them to withdraw a not-insubstantial amount of money (which the bank thankfully returned to us).
Imagine our delight when the crime ring was apprehended last year, and this remarkable painting was seized during the investigation. This custom commission illustrates the crime to a tee. I guess we’re Richie Rich in this scenario…
Feel free to comment your favourite money-related emoji 💳 📈 🤑
I don't remember where I found this anymore (was it you?), but here's a link to the 2025 Art Basel and UBS report on Global Collecting - https://theartmarket.artbasel.com/download/The-Art-Basel-and-UBS-Survey-of-Global-Collecting-in-2025.pdf. I'm trying to read it, really! Does it even matter after the last month and a half?
commissioning that piece is wild! I love it