Monetary Symbolism: Art as a Deposit of Value

Authors

  • Violeta Vojvodić Balaž

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.333

Keywords:

money, value, the law of scarcity, art research, financial aesthetics

Abstract

MONEY – a unit of account, a deposit of value, and a medium of exchange – formally evolved from grain, precious metal, cheap paper, to state-of-the-art digital accounting records managed by artificial intelligence. Although the economists of the 19th century believed in its neutrality, money is an ambiguous socio-economic phenomenon which serves as a political tool and a measure of value even if its own value is volatile. The stamp of authority marked the symbolization of money as a cultural artifact: the character of a ruler, a symbol, or an inscription on the coin came to be a signifier of value. Accordingly, the financial system raised artistic concerns when money began to be an abstraction, i.e., a symbolic paper which acquires legitimacy via social consensus and constructs its value on the underlying commodity or the performances of the economic system. Starting from the similarities between Artistic and Monetary simulacrum and the fact that artwork functions as a deposit of cultural and financial value, this paper will discuss the artistic use of monetary symbolism from the early examples of satirical prints in The Great Mirror of Folly (1720) triggered by the speculation with one of the first European official paper currencies, to Duchamp’s art experiments with the securities and contemporary art research practice based on financial aesthetics.

 

Article received: April 5, 2019; Article accepted: July 6, 2019; Published online: October 15, 2019; Original scholarly paper

Author Biography

Violeta Vojvodić Balaž

Violeta Vojvodić Balaž
http://urtica.org

Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade
Serbia

Violeta Vojvodić Balaž, received MA at Faculty of Fine Art Belgrade for postgraduate work CD-ROM Urtica Medicamentum est (2000). She specialized European Diploma in Cultural Management, Brussels, her research focused on strategic planning and virtual organization (2006). Violeta studied at the University of Belgrade at the Faculty of Fine Art for her art Ph.D. (2017), with an art doctoral thesis The Case Of Art-Adventurers Operating Into Global Margin – Art, Money, and Value in The Age of Artificial Intelligence. Together with Eduard Balaz, she co-founded Urtica media art group in 1999 http://urtica.org. She was one of the co-founders of New Media Center_kuda.org (Novi Sad). She exhibited at numerous international festivals and exhibitions and won UNESCO Digital Arts Award at Institute for Advanced Media Art and Science in Japan. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate at the Transdisciplinary Study of Contemporary Art and Media at the Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK), Belgrade, Serbia.

References

“After Memory, 2007–2008.” Irena Lagator website. http://www.irenalagator.net/works/After_Memory. Accessed August 20, 2019.

“Harlequin Stockbroker 1720,” The Great Mirror of Folly. Yale University Beinecke Digital Collections. http://brbl-zoom.library.yale.edu/viewer/1114508. Accessed August 19, 2019.

Hayek, Friedrich. Denationalisation of Money. The Argument Refined, An Analysis of the Theory and Practice of Concurrent Currencies. London: The Institute of Economic, 1990.

Herodotus. Herodotus Histories (1.94), ed. A. D. Godley. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0016,001:1:94. Accessed August 20, 2019.

“In memoriam, 1996.” Apsolutno Website. http://www.apsolutno.org/. Accessed August 20, 2019.

Judovitz, Dalia. Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. [first published 1995]

Kamholz, Roger. “Andy Warhol and ‘200 One Dollar Bills’.” Sotheby’s Contemporary Art. Published November 3, 2013. http://www.sothebys.com/en/news-video/blogs/all-blogs/21-days-of-andy-warhol/2013/11/andy-warhol-200-one-dollar-bills.html. Accessed August 20, 2019.

Lehdonvirta, Vili, and Edward Castronova. Virtual economies: Design and Analysis. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The MIT Press, 2014. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9525.001.0001

“Maurizio Cattelan: ‘America’.” Guggenheim Museum. https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/maurizio-cattelan-america. Accessed August 23, 2019.

“Robert Kalina Euro design, Euro Banknote Design Exhibition.” European Central Bank. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/euro_catalogueen.pdf. Accessed August 22, 2019.

Tasić, Vladimir. Matematika i koreni postmodernog mišljenja. Novi Sad: Svetovi, 2002. [Title of original: Tasić, Vladimir. Mathematics and The Roots of Postmodern Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.]

“Value Quest – The Golden Card, 2010.” Urtica Website. http://urtica.org/artworks/vq-goldencard.html#.WI-sHSMrK2w. Accessed August 23, 2019.

Vilar, Pijer. Zlato i novac u povijesti 1450–1920. Beograd: Nolit, 1990. [Title of original: Vilar, Pierre. Or et monnaie dans l'Histoire 1450–1920. Paris: Flammarion, 1974.]

“0Euro, 2004–2011.” Michael Aschauer’s 0Euro Bank website. http://www.0euro.biz/site/Learn/Design. Accessed August 23, 2019.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.333 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.333

Downloads

Published

15.10.2019

How to Cite

Vojvodić Balaž, V. (2019). Monetary Symbolism: Art as a Deposit of Value. AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, (20), 137–147. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i20.333