For the love of money...

"For the love of money..." 

Text of Dialogue 

Written/Produced/Directed/Edited by Shannon Lowell Frady 

Co-Produced by Sergei Kramtsov

 Interviews by Barbara Celis, Shannon Lowell Frady and Sergei Kramtsov 

BOGGS: It's unbelievable! It's unbelievable. It can't -- It can't be real. ... But I know it is real. 

TEXT: In 1990, the Secret Service raided the studio of artist J.S.G. Boggs. To date, none of theconfiscated items have been returned. 

BOGGS (driving in Washington DC):It was much worse when they raided my house. They broke everything up, they kicked everythingaround and threw things around, and said terrible things to me and about me, and uh, you know...They told me that I was gonna be arrested, and then they went to court and said that they neversaid that, and it's a lie, and I have it on videotape, that they said, "Can we arrest him?" 

TEXT: Among the items confiscated: a pair of boxer shorts. 

BOGGS (driving in Washington DC): You know, the fact that they're not gonna give me back my boxer shorts, just goes to show how crazy these people are. And, you know, sooner or later, and it may be later, they will have to show what they consider to be illegal. And the thing that I'm also fighting for, and very afraid of, is that they want to destroy this work. And if they destroy it before the public gets to see it, then the public will never know what a tragedy of injustice this is. So it's very important to me, that even if I can't get the work back, that I ensure that this work is not destroyed. Unfortunately, it's too late for the first group of material that they seized in 1990... It was materials to make an exhibition catalog for a museum show... and they've already destroyed it.

 TEXT: The Purpose of the Art 

BOGGS (gallery):The main purpose of my work is to explore and enjoy the world through the visual experience. Rather than reading text, there are other ways to access the world and other ways to comprehend the relationships that exist in the world of ourselves to ourselves, and ourselves to each other, and ourselves to other entities and structures, things as concrete as sidewalks, and things as abstract as social groups or religion and politics, how the human mind works, and how the human spirit works. How is it, for example, that we determine value? And how is it, for example, that we would value one thing over another? What is it, how is it that we engage in that process? And how much of that process is something that we do through the visual experience? 

Sometimes somebody comes to you and they say, "This is a 5-dollar bill, and it's worth more than a 1-dollar bill." Or, let's take a more concrete example. Here's a 1-dollar bill, and here's a 10-dollar bill. We are told that this is worth ten times more than this. Yet they're both the same size, they're both the same aesthetic quality, they both weigh the same amount, they both smell the same, they're made out of the same materials, they're printed on the same presses. What is it that makes this object worth ten of this object? What is it that makes this object worth one-tenth of this object? And what is this relationship? And how do we come about that? I use this to illustrate the ways in which determinations are made without the aid of visual experience, or very little of it. 

And yes, there's a one and a zero here, and there's a one there, so that's a little bit of visual experience, but the reason why we value one over the other so distinctly has very little to do with our experience of this visually. 

TEXT: On Wall Street: D.W. Wright, Consultant for history archives at J.P. Morgan & Co. 

WRIGHT (in J. P. Morgan office):A work of art can be used in barter very easily. In fact it's happening every day between collectors and dealers; who determines the value of a particular work of art and how does anyone agree on what that value is? Now some of that is set by the marketplace, and recognized historical records of what that artist has sold for or what a work of art like that has brought in the marketplace, but some of it has to do purely with perception, perception of rarity, perception of cultural importance, desire, or, even false expectations or expectations of any kind, response to marketing, all those human foibles can come into "How do you assign value to a work of art," or "What is its barter value?" If I have a painting and want to trade it for two of your paintings, how do we agree that my one painting is worth two of your paintings? That whole concept of barter can, and is often, applied to works of art.