Boggs

by Lawrence Weschler

New Yorker writer Lawrence Weschler chronicles the antics of J. S. G. Boggs, a young artist with a certain panache, a certain flair, a certain je ne payes pas - an artist, that is, whose consuming passion is money, or perhaps, more precisely, value. What Boggs likes to do is to draw money - actual paper notes in the denominations of standard currencies from all over the world - and then to go out and try to spend those drawings. Instead of selling his money drawings outright to interested collectors, Boggs looks for merchants who will accept his drawings in lieu of cash payment for their wares or services as part of elaborately choreographed transactions, complete with receipts and even proper change - an artistic practice that regularly lands him in trouble with treasury police around the globe. Boggs: A Comedy of Values teases out these transactions and their sometimes dramatic legal consequences, following Boggs on a larkish, though at the same time disconcertingly profound, econo-p