The Money Series by Anthony White
by Kaiser EdamameIt’s only art if someone will pay for it.
Anthony White is money. As a brash twenty-something living in a town of 11,000 people in Yepoon, Australia, he began his career as an artist. Shortly after becoming an artist he was tired of being poor. So he got a job at Credit-Suisse as a “stockbroker”. Most of our readers are probably saying a “stockbroker” isn’t a real thing, it’s just what ignorant people call everyone who works in the cut throat world of high finance. Unfortunately the only articles written about Anthony are by ignorant art critics, so he’s a stockbroker, and that’s that. This is where the story gets good.
After “broking stocks” for six years his girlfriend told him that he was too focused on money and he needed a hobby. So to appease his grilfriend he started painting again in February of this year, but he also wanted to teach his grilfriend an important lesson which was “Don’t pretend that you don’t like money, because everyone likes money.” That’s when he invented The Money Series.
In The Money Series, Anthony paints a picture and the only thing on the picture is a $ (or other currency) sign and a number like this:
He then sells the picture for only and exactly only the amount painted. E.g. the painting above was sold to Mister Juggles for $87. He only paints one of each number and he refuses to paint them out of order so he must have a buyer for every number in order to continue. In our humble opinion this is artistic tomfoolery and financial genius. A few things we like:
1) He is basically selling you a colorful price tag
2) He is limiting supply and via his self-imposed price control system he is nearly guaranteeing the paintings will be good investments. The $4 piece just sold for $500 in the after-market.
3) He is mocking over-priced art and giving you the opportunity to mock it with him when you hang it up in your house and proudly display to all your visitors how much you spent to cover your wall with a commisioned painting.
All of our staff is or will very soon be holders of his art and we love it. So if you have a non-artist income then go to his site anythonywhite.net right now and buy art that’s so liquid it’s practically M2.
This is pure genius.
Great idea, but this guy’s a little late to the punch:
http://www.onethousandpaintings.com
Also, he’s clearly mis-priced these things.
http://www.onethousandpaintings.com/faq/#priceofpainting
He’s failed to take into account the utter inability for modern-art-loving yuppies-cum-hipsters to know when they’re being duped.
Sigh, I wish I knew how to paint numbers…
Anthony White’s Money Series predates in by almost two years.
Those paintings are all the same, done in the vain of the MillionDollarHomePage.com — pure commodity in value, but creating pricing power by scarcity and then crossing your fingers that there is a networking effect. The visceral connection to the number is weak (wtf kind of pricing formula is ($1000- the number * the GDP deflator / the price discount multiplier?). But they do appeal to me.