Art, money, property, anarchism

I'm astonished to discover that I've never written here about J. S. G. Boggs, an artist whose best-known work involves drawing detailed images of currency. His site includes a page that describes who he is and the origin of his money art, an appeals-court transcript from some years back, and a 1992 essay about his work by Preston K. Covey titled "Ethics, Art, & Money in the Work of J.S.G. Boggs." I first encountered Boggs in what I think was a reprint of a New Yorker article in 1996; the article was probably by Lawrence Weschler, who expanded it into a 1999 book, Boggs: A Comedy of Values, which I haven't read but would someday like to.

Something else I'm surprised I never linked to (probably because I encountered it before I started this journal): P. J. Proudhon's What Is Property?, which starts out with the claim that "Property is robbery" (more often translated "Property is theft"). Note: I don't necessarily endorse the Proudhon piece; I just think it's interesting (what I've read of it so far, anyway).

While I'm pointing to interesting works about property that I haven't read in their entirety, here's "Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright," a 1999 article by Eben Moglen. I'm amused to see the copyright notice at the bottom of the page—though it turns out to be a copyright on the compilation that contains the article rather than the article itself.

Oh, and I may as well point to the Anarchism FAQ, with the caveat that it's written from a leftist-anarchist point of view which doesn't really acknowledge anarcho-capitalism as real anarchism.

Note my clever use in this entry of the Harper's Index Effect, wherein juxtaposition is used to make it look like a set of items are somehow related, even if the relationship among them isn't very clear.

One Response to “Art, money, property, anarchism”

  1. Fred

    Lawrence Wechsler did a nice writeup on Boggs that was reprinted in this book.

    Wechsler’s book on kunstkammers is also a lot of fun.

    reply

Join the Conversation