Money Is the Root of Painter’s Art : Boggs ‘Spends’ Drawings; Bank of England’s Not Amused

Boggs lives the disheveled sufferings of the unknown, searching artist. His unmade downstairs flat is turn-of-the-century; all unplugged drafts, dirty dishes and frat house rummage with an unspoken apology for no place to sit.

Boggs (“It’s James Stephen George . . . but artists being the way they are just call me Boggs”) is a throwback American Bohemian in London, a nomadic painter with a Panama hat, one change of baggy sweater and no interest in fumbling for checks. He has a smoker’s cough, a pierced left ear crowded with gold rings, passe long hair and life savings that amount to loose change.

Conversely, even perversely, Boggs enjoys an endless supply of money.

Because he sketches cash. On paper, tablecloths and coasters. Then he spends his drawings. On cab fares, airline tickets and five-star hotels.

Boggs is given change in coins of the realm or republic. Which he then spends on the meager necessities of artistic dolor and the materiel to create more money.

And there’s absolutely no catch.

“I simply offer the drawing and ask people to consider its artistic worth, its monetary value, not its numerical value,” he explained. “Is this drawing of a 20 note worth more, as a piece of art, than a real 20 note or a meal of pasta and chicken? Or the cost of a cab ride or a round of drinks?

“Most of the people, about 60% of them, say yes. It might take a while, but they say yes and accept the drawing. So I’m an artist engaging in a form of barter.

Spending, Not Selling

“I never force the drawings on people and I don’t sell them. I spend them.”

And he’s always covered by sufficient hidden ready in case the bartender or cabbie turns out to be a Philistine. Or a former bouncer. Or a votary of fine art.

There are 250 home-brewed bills in circulation, Boggs said. Penciled pounds. Line-drawn lire. Boggs bucks. Freehand francs. They have paid, he claims, for British Airways tickets to London, a room at the elegant Hotel Euler in Basle, dinner at Le Routier in Camden Lock, four shirts, room rent, countless beers, endless coffees, numerous bottles of wine and, once, a $600 cab ride.

Boggs--connected by birth, schooling and family to New Jersey, Florida and California--will move his studio-digs to Los Angeles this year. He plans to visit relatives in Santa Barbara, tap the cultural energies of Southern California--and see how many enchiladas can be bought with a homemade sawbuck.

It would appear that Boggs’ money worries are over. Not quite.

For the Bank of England, that jealous monopolist of money making and zealous protector of Britain’s wealth since 1694, doesn’t take kindly to competition.

The bank has complained to the bobbies. Scotland Yard raided Boggs’ flat and his exhibit at the Young Unknowns Gallery. Four dozen pieces of work were seized as evidence and Boggs spent a night in the clink.

And last month, Boggs was called before the august Horseferry Road Magistrates’ Court on four counts filed under the crown’s 1981 Forgery and Counterfeiting Act. As nonconformists and culturists have done since Socrates, the artist chose trial by jury. The case, with no limit on the fines that could be imposed, is pending.

The bank is represented by Robert Harman, QC. That suffix stands for Queen’s Counsel and identifies Harman as a barrister nominated by the lord chancellor to serve the Crown.

Boggs is represented by Mark Stephens, a partner in a London firm specializing in the infant field of fine-arts law.

In court and in interviews and in the newspapers of Fleet Street, Boggs has stormed magnificently and traditionally against the bank: “They are a threat to freedom of artistic expression . . . it’s like having the KGB on your butt . . . I’m the test case, the example and they (Bank of England) think that if they convict me, any other artists thinking of drawing money will hear the warning to stop . . . had they looked they would have seen it (drawn money) is art, not counterfeit money.”

But the bank’s action, spokesman Nigel Falls sniffed, should not be seen in such exaggerated terms. Boggs is not considered a master forger caught cranking out bills on a basement printing press. The sole yet far from capricious issue, Falls said, is one of “unauthorized reproduction” of bank notes.

Section 18 of the act, he continued, is the bank’s shield against any reproduction of bank notes, in advertising, in financial promotions, that could make things easy for criminal engravers and printers. Written permission is mandatory for any reproduction.

“Mr. Boggs applied for permission,” Falls said. “We did not give him permission. So there is an existing act which we are enforcing and beyond that, as the matter is sub judice , we do not wish to comment.”

Back to Boggs: “My money is not a reproduction. Art is a separation from what the subject is about. Renoir painted a nude, he didn’t reproduce a woman. Look at the painting of a smoker’s pipe by (Belgian surrealist) Rene Magritte. It says: ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe. ‘ This is not a pipe.”

To the less subjective--such as Peter Dunn, a reporter for the London Independent and a professional watcher of Boggs--there is a middle ground.

Serious But Naive Artist

Dunn sees Boggs as far from pictorial perfection but “a deadly serious artist, in a naive sort of way . . . a nice, happy-go-lucky eccentric in a boring world.” The Bank of England, on the other hand, is guilty of “overreacting . . . and I think someone there is going to look very foolish.

“But that’s the nature of British bureaucracy. If you buck them in any way, they can be incredibly petty . . . Then there’s the fact that Boggs is an American with long hair.”

For Boggs, it all began two years ago at a standard place for dreamers. A Chicago diner. He was pondering numbers, their design, their social significance, their stature as a universal communication.

“What is $1? It’s faith. It’s a share in America. And at one time you could take one dollar into a bank and get gold for it. But no more. Now it’s credit cards and computer transfers until one day there won’t be any need for paper money.”

As this thought expanded, Boggs began doodling a Washington. A waitress admired it. She asked to buy it.

“I told her ‘no’ but that I’d pay for the coffee and doughnut with it. Ninety cents. She took the drawing and gave me a dime change.”

The rest, as they say, is fiduciary.

Dinner and Cab Rides

Boggs went Dutch at a Manhattan dinner with an art collector and paid for his half with a $50 Boggs original. During a two-week stay in Basle, Boggs estimates he “spent” $2,000 in homemade money on hotels, meals and cab rides. Cabbies, he said, began ambushing his hotel and gallery exits in hopes of obtaining drawings for payment.

The public gamble, of course, is that one day a Boggs will be worth a fortune.

Boggs, however, resents any suggestion he is ripping off the gullible. Especially when an intricate note could be 30 hours in the creation. “You try doing my job and after a day, if you can honestly call the work nothing . . . “

He rejects the accusation that his artistic impact is superficial. “Most of the people I encounter are not those who go to a gallery. I give them a drawing of money and the artistic opportunity is created.

“I then challenge that person to make a statement, to debate, to accept or reject the offering, and in most cases that leads to dialogue. What is art? Why is it valuable in the first place? Why is it so important to us? You come down to the fact that art is a sign of life, an actual byproduct of life and a way of bridging gaps between people.

“That’s far from superficial. It’s performance art.”

Boggs said that he earned $450 in real money last year.

That conventional income came from selling the receipts and change obtained from bartering with sketched money.

Bartered Airline Ticket

Consider the Boggs’ barter that bought an airline ticket from Basle to London. Boggs paid for the ticket by giving his Swiss travel agent a drawing of three 100 franc ($65) notes. He kept the ticket stub. He sold the receipt and his change to a gallery for 50 francs ($33) who in turn sold it to a collector. For $500.

A complex deal recently brought the paper work together again. It has been framed to hang in Galerie Demenga, Basle, as maybe the oddest passage of pop art since Christo set a 24-mile white swatch across Sonoma and Marin counties.

“Imagine it,” Boggs said. “Pieces of paper that went out to the world. They separated. I lost control of it. Then, somehow, they all came back together to form one piece of art that belongs to three different people.

“It’s like a great piece of kinetic sculpture.”

Money, the intricacies and finesse of its workmanship, its power and message, have been inspiring artists and designers for years. It also has bought them grief.

The U.S. Treasury Department tussled with Time Inc. after the magazine pictured $100 bills on a cover. That case crawled to the Supreme Court before it was ruled that “photographic or other likenesses” of dollars would be allowed as long as they were much smaller or much larger than life.

Another Artistic Caper

Two years ago, Marshall Hobart, a designer-artist now living in Redlands, Calif., had a lithograph confiscated by Secret Service agents. It was “Plate One,” Hobart’s representation of a $1,000 gold certificate printing plate.

After due process (including government realization that Hobart’s litho was a positive that would have produced a reverse image if the plates were used to create actual certificates) the work was returned and distribution allowed.

All of which goes to prove that governments may not know much about art, but they know what they like about money.