Taking Things at Face Value

According to author Lawrence Weschler, when it comes to appreciating the art of J.S.G. Boggs, people are extraordinarily resistant to change.

Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, those clunky Susan B. Anthonys, dollar bills--any kind of change.

Making change, explains Weschler, often becomes the deal-breaker in transactions involving the works of Boggs--one must use the word “transaction” rather than “sale” because part of Boggs’ process of making his art is to spend it.

Since 1984, Boggs--age 44, with longish, graying hair and an air of cheerful, bad-boy rebellion--has made a career of drawing money. Not from a bank. On paper. His painstaking drawings resemble actual currency. But the bills differ from government-issue bills in subtle or obvious ways, depending on the object. The Boggs “Fun Buck,” for example, hails from the United States of Florida and bears the inscription: “In Fun We Trust.”

Instead of selling his works, Boggs finds merchants willing to accept a “Boggs Bill” in lieu of cash. He does not try to pass the bills as legal tender, simply offers his art in trade.

For Boggs, a transaction is not successful unless the merchant not only accepts the Boggs Bill at face value, but also gives Boggs change--in legal currency. In a recent transaction in Portland, Ore., Boggs bought a $3 hamburger with a $1,000 Boggs Bill and received $997 in change.

One notable exception: Boggs once accepted a drawing of correct change instead of the real thing, tickled by the inventiveness of the seller.

“You can’t imagine the number of times that the deal is almost done, and then . . . people say, wait a second, the bill is $47, and you want me to give you $3 in change [for a $50 Boggs Bill]? Forget it!” recounts Weschler, who recently visited Los Angeles with Boggs to promote his new book, “Boggs: A Comedy of Values,” just out from University of Chicago Press.

New Yorker writer Weschler, veteran chronicler of the quirky, is also author of “Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder” (Pantheon Books, New York), a look at David Wilson’s reality-bending Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City. Weschler is fascinated by the abstract nature of “value,” and the “tears in reality” Boggs’ transactions create. (That’s “tears” as in “holes,” not as in “ . . . of a clown.”)

Boggs and Weschler share enthusiasm for the electricity that always attends the “performance art” of Boggs’ transactions. “The combination of art and money is just absolutely loaded,” observes Weschler. “When you start playing with money itself, people get really, really nervous.”

*

That electricity ricocheted off the walls during a recent transaction I witnessed at Hugo Molina, a California cuisine restaurant in Pasadena. Watching the sparks fly around a $50 Boggs Bill (No. 139 of this edition) boggs--er, boggles--the mind.

At the table were Weschler, Boggs, Boggs’ friend Megan Brown (whose face appears on an edition of $50 Boggs Bills featuring women), this writer and a Times photographer. Because of our presence, both this writer and the photographer would become part of the artwork, with names recorded as witnesses to the transaction.

Boggs announced our arrival at the restaurant with this pleasant comment to the staff: “We’re here to make some trouble.”

First order of business before ordering: to find out if waiter Sain Squier-Mayoral will accept the $50 Boggs Bill--printed not in green, but an attractive burnt orange.

“I’m an artist, and what I do is make prints and spend that money,” Boggs explains.

“Oh, cool. I came across some of those in New York once, some NYU students made some,” Mayoral says. “And they looked like real money, and I actually used them to pay for a cab.”

“Knowingly?” Boggs asks.

“Well, I didn’t think it would go over, but the guy took it, and--this was five in the morning in Manhattan, so it was like, what the hell?” Mayoral says, somewhat sheepishly.

“And how did you feel about that?” queries Boggs.

“Guilty after I did it, yeah,” Mayoral admits. “The next day. Then, we were hammered, so it was kind of fun.”

After a bit more back and forth, Boggs asks Mayoral if he will honor some Boggs $50s at face value, to pay for dinner.

“Sure,” Mayoral says quickly.

“And you’d give me the receipt. And the change as well?” “Sure,” Mayoral replies. “But you’re going to have to give me this same kind of play money, so I can pay you back.”

Boggs laughs. “See, I don’t give it away--I only spend it.”

Mayoral raises an eyebrow. “Oh, isn’t that convenient.”

“Sometimes it is, actually,” Boggs replies.

Mayoral appears intrigued, but still a little skeptical. He hits the figurative “default” key. “I’ll bring over Hugo and see what he thinks, all right?”

Owner Hugo Molina appears. Once again, Boggs explains to Molina that he is an artist who “travels the world, spending my art, finding people like you, with open mind, and free spirit, who appreciate art and have good taste, I think.”

The sunny-tempered Molina is confused at first, but it only takes the word “art” to persuade him to accept the $50 for drinks.

Dinner--which included three orders of today’s special, a mesquite-grilled wild boar with melted Gouda cheese in a “fig and sugar cane reduction”--was paid for with a credit card.

By phone the following day, Molina is reflective: “I help all kinds of different people, I give donations all over, almost any organization that calls me here, I try to help, for children, for mentally retarded, so many things,” Molina offers. “This is the first time an artist actually came in through my doors, so I thought, ‘Yeah, sure, why not?’

“I really don’t know who he is, to be quite honest with you, maybe he is a famous individual, I don’t know. But I didn’t hesitate to donate, you know; it’s almost like buying his art.”

After Molina gives his blessing, Mayoral takes the $50 for a $35 tab ($29.17 plus a $5.83 tip) and returns change and the receipt to Boggs. (Molina confirms that he made sure Mayoral got his tip, in American currency.)

Suddenly, Boggs turns to me and asks if I want to buy the receipt for $500. Of course not, I respond. As a reporter, you don’t make financial deals with your subjects.

This handy excuse, however, did not occur to me until I’d already felt the unnerving jolt of Boggs Bill electricity. Had I dropped the winning lottery ticket while waiting in line at the 7-11? Failed, once again, to buy stock early in Microsoft? Refused the Frog Prince his kiss? Even worse, did my hesitation indicate that, deep down in my Midwestern heart, I’m really not a free spirit with an open mind who appreciates art and has good taste? By my refusal, had I instead proven myself the kind of skeptic who thinks, when offered wild boar and Gouda: “Isn’t this really, you know, sort of a . . . cheeseburger?”

These questions remain unanswered.

*

Boggs’ art has led to clashes with treasury officials around the globe, including the U.S. Secret Service, which has seized a total of 1,300 pieces of Boggs’ property--”drawings, paintings, prints, a sponge, a bow tie and a pair of my underwear,” he says--as part of an ongoing counterfeiting investigation. The Secret Service has never sought to prosecute Boggs but also won’t give back his stuff. A Secret Service spokesman says the agency “has nothing to add” to this story.

Boggs is hoping to take the matter before the Supreme Court; his lawyers have agreed to accept a special edition of $100,000 Boggs Bills in lieu of legal fees. “The interesting thing is, if I win the case, I can pay them with the Boggs Bills, and if I don’t, I can’t,” Boggs says plaintively.

Lest one get too misty-eyed over Boggs as a cause celebre, however, according to Michael Small, chief counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the only legal matter on the table is whether the seizure of his property is unconstitutional--not the larger issue of whether spending Boggs Bills constitutes counterfeiting.

For the foreseeable future, transactions continue. The Boggs Bill, the change (signed by Boggs), the receipt and any other evidence of a transaction all become part of the art. Each element is framed separately and may be sold individually by a gallery.

Boggs Bills for $50 have been sold by galleries for $500; the framed change from the Oregon burger deal might go for $6,000 (there is a 4 1/2-year waiting list to buy change). If a collector is diligent enough to track down all pieces of the paper trail, the package is worth substantially more. One elaborate transaction, titled “Dinner With Ann,” sold for $126,000 according to Boggs; Weschler says a typical transaction sells for “mid-five figures.”

Boggs’ art has appeared in numerous exhibitions, including locally in last year’s “On the Money: At the Intersection of Art and Commerce” at Bergamot Station’s Frumkin-Duval Gallery. The gallery has offered Boggs Bills for sale at prices ranging from $1,500 to $20,000, although they haven’t sold any yet.

Boggs lives mainly on legal currency generated by gallery sales of his work. As his art gains notoriety, he must battle the growing problem of counterfeit Boggs Bills.

*

In September, Boggs will be back in Los Angeles for a month’s residence at the Frumkin gallery; he will pay his rent with $10,000 in Boggs bills, to be displayed on the gallery walls. While in town, Boggs plans to spend as many Boggs Bills as possible. He will also become an artwork of sorts himself, setting up housekeeping in the gallery, John-and-Yoko-style, with friend Brown.

It appears that even those in the middle of the Boggs mystique are not immune to squirming at the crossroads of art and money. Frumkin applauds Boggs for raising consciousness on the dilemma of putting monetary value on a piece of art. But is that not what she herself also does every day? “If I were what you’d call a blue-chip dealer, working with collectors who buy art as investments, I would have pause,” Frumkin says, a bit defensively. “But I am working with young artists, who are living and reacting to the world that they are part of.”

And even Boggs just doesn’t like to talk about art and commerce as it applies to himself. It’s clearly evident when he’s asked whether the release of Weschler’s book will enhance the market value of Boggs Bills.

“I don’t like to get into the secondary aspects of this, but I’m not an idiot,” he admits, with a sly grin. “The book doesn’t hurt.” *