Money Art - Moneys influence in Art
In this article we share with you the 3 artists famous for their art expressing the correlation of Money and Art, creating what we call today Money Art.
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (/ˈwɔːrhɒl/; born Andrew Warhola; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertising that flourished by the 1960s.
After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist. His art used many types of media, including hand drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, silk screening, sculpture, film, and music. His studio, The Factory, was a well known gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, Bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities, and wealthy patrons.
He managed and produced The Velvet Underground, a rock band which had a strong influence on the evolution of punk rock music. He founded Interview magazine and was the author of numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol andPopism: The Warhol Sixties. He is also notable as a gay man who lived openly as such before the gay liberation movement, and he is credited with coining the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame".
Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist.
Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$105 million for a 1963 canvas titled "Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)"; his works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. A 2009 article in The Economist described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market".
Alec Monopoly
Alec Monopoly (American) is the alias of the anonymous Los Angeles-based graffiti artist, known for his subversive appropriation of iconic pop figures and signature depiction of the Monopoly board game mascot character. By combining elements of the game’s characters with financially apocalyptic clippings from newspapers, the artist satirically blends Pop Art with cultural criticism and social commentary. Using the urban environments of New York City, Los Angeles, and London as his canvas, Monopoly exposes issues with bureaucratic hierarchies and the American collective consciousness.
Having achieved international renown, he has been commissioned for high-profile projects with The W Hotel, Vitamin Water, Avicii, and CoverGirl. Unlike other street artists, Monopoly avoids vandalism—often painting on abandoned buildings and warehouses rather than government properties or businesses.
His adoption of the board game character Mr. Monopoly as his mascot was inspired by the stockbroker Bernie Madoff, and is intended as a criticism of the billion-dollar bailouts and de-regulation associated with major banks. Alec is the most famous for implementing money with his artwork aka money art. Following the success of Mike Mozart.
Monopoly has exhibited both nationally and internationally. He took part in Art Basel Miami Beach in 2010, Art Basel Hong Kong in 2015, and opened his first solo show in May 2015 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bangkok. Originally from New York City, he has lived and worked Los Angeles since 2006. - Money Art
Having achieved international renown, he has been commissioned for high-profile projects with The W Hotel, Vitamin Water, Avicii, and CoverGirl. Unlike other street artists, Monopoly avoids vandalism—often painting on abandoned buildings and warehouses rather than government properties or businesses. His adoption of the board game character Mr. Monopoly as his mascot was inspired by the stockbroker Bernie Madoff, and is intended as a criticism of the billion-dollar bailouts and de-regulation associated with major banks.
He has had exhibitions throughout the United States, and took part in Art Basel Miami Beach in 2010. Originally from New York City, Monopoly has lived and worked Los Angeles since 2006.
Ben Allen
Ben Allen is a rebel and his art reflects that. When he first started painting in the 90s, he soon realized this could be an outlet for the wild creative energy which distracted him so much in his youth. The application of paint, ink or collage on to a surface has been a compulsive, therapeutic habit ever since he returned from a trip to Mexico aged 19, where he first encountered the philosophical concepts of perception, inner development and mind-expansion which underpin the writing of Carlos Castendada, his most significant and recurring influence.
Ben’s paintings, murals and screen prints occupy a space between street art, graffiti, abstraction, graphic design, pop culture, modernism and comic strips. It’s an oeuvre which is best described as Contemporary Pop Art. Using a range of materials including acrylic, household paints, spray paint, screen printing, markers, comic books, digital print, billboard papers and US currency, he makes diverse, intuitive and boldly subversive imagery.
Money Mickey - Ben Allen / Money Art
Ben’s work is built on a foundation of experience, freedom of thought, experimentation and an ‘emotional synesthesia’. Music is vital to the creative process and the vibrant colours and abstracted forms of his evocative paintings and prints resonate with the with the beats that reverberate around his bright, open-plan studio. It is connected to emotions, too.
The way he feels is reflected in each brush stroke, splatter or sprayed form, and these actions become an unselfconscious monitor of his mood and energy. Despite this intensity, the finished result is always considered and Ben will work on a number of canvases at any one time, moving between them, adding layers and references until he finds a resolution.
Ben has worked on a range of bespoke interior design projects and his artwork has been used by high-end brands including LG, Nokia, Virgin, Levis, Vans, Estrella Gallicia, NME Magazine, Converse, Jamie Oliver and Subliminal Records.
“I can’t really explain what a finished work looks like. I just know when I’m there. My paintings are about chance, intuition and experiences. I don’t want to tell people what they’re looking at, I want them to find something they connect with - visually and emotionally.”
As an artist, Ben is constantly motivated to challenge art that feels safe or easy. His process is focussed and intense and his output reveals a vivid culmination of joy and pain, anarchy and peach, love and hate, greed and kindness. Amongst this hotbed of contradictions, the work resides, vibrating with life and a tangible energy.
Life Sucks - Ben Allen
“Ben Allen is a contemporary artist, known for his distinctive Pop paintings. Using complex collage techniques, his pieces create a dynamic mash-up of popular culture, which work to critique the banal and the mundane, challenge mainstream media values and inspire a sense of freedom. Allen’s works are self confessed meditations. His techniques capture an emotion rather than a reality; a demonstration of art as a perfect vehicle for the general artistic quest to convey sentiment and arrest motion.”
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