Money in Art

Exhibition Catalogue Money in Art, presented at the Monnaie de Paris (March 30 to September 24, 2023).

From the fifteenth century, when representations of metallic coins and scenes of transactions in painting multiplied, to the twentieth century, when a more intrusive reflection on the mechanisms of money appeared, through the nineteenth century, which saw its art economy disrupted by the birth of impressionism and the prominent role of the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, the imagination produced by artists about money is rich and permanent.

"The relationship between art and money cannot be reduced to economic considerations between values and exchanges. Capitalism has certainly made the work of art a commodity like any other; for all that, art imposes an ideal, irrational, floating, even gaseous value, from zero to infinity (or almost), because it touches the unquantifiable: desire, pleasure, dream, impulse, and exacerbates what Karl Marx called: "the enigma of value".

Summary

THE MONEY IN THE ART AND VICE VERSA

THE MODERNIST REVOLUTION IN THE ART AND THE MARKET

THE GOLDEN CALF AND THE MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS

TAKE THE MONEY

I MYTHS AND ORIGINS OF MONEY

II MORALITY AND MONEY PROFESSIONS

III ARTISTIC REVOLUTION AND FINANCIAL CAPITALISM

IV WHAT DOES THE ARTIST SELL

V CAPITAL : I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU NOT

VI ART AND MONEY, BETWEEN FLOWS AND DATAS

Money in Art - English texts