Andy Warhol
Dollar Sign, 1982
© The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
If you're not making money with your art, you have to say it's art. If you are, you have to say it's something else.
Warhol began to paint images of dollar bills in the early 1960s, producing canvases arrayed with endless grids of bank notes. Returning to the subject in the 1980s, he isolated the dollar sign and replicated that symbol in paintings and prints interpreted in a sketchy, improvisational style. Warhol's Dollar Signs are direct and wry reminders that, by the 80s, paintings had themselves become consumer items and metaphors for money, a phenomenon that he readily accepted. "I like money on the wall," he said. "Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you, the first thing they would see is the money on the wall."
All paintings, prints, sculptures, and photographs by Andy Warhol ©1998 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction, including downloading, and/or retransmission of Warhol's artwork(s) is prohibited under international copyright law. Users desiring to reproduce or retransmit the images must secure the appropriate authorizations.