This book is a whimsical facsimile edition of an artist's book created by Andy Warhol in 1981 at Christmastime for Berkeley Reinhold, the cousin of art-advocate Henry Geldzahler. Beginning with a simple outline and curve and embodying a flipbooklike genesis, unique abstract drawings by Warhol become increasingly recognisable as the artist's inimitable dollar sign.
As a child and young adult, Berkeley Reinhold knew Andy Warhol well. Warhol painted portraits of her and gossiped with her about her life, wanting to know what was hot and what was not. From one of their conversations came Berkeley's idea of sending a dollar bill to 100 artists, asking them to use the dollar to comment on the relationship between art and money. Soon after, Warhol gave Berkeley an inscribed leather-bound book of his original pencil drawings depicting the evolution of the dollar sign.
In 1986 Berkeley curated an exhibition titled "Art and Money" with works by Warhol, Keith Haring, and Ed Ruscha, which presaged the dramatic financial speculation in the art market of the 1990s and 2000s. Warhol's relationship to money sounds frivolous - "American money is very well-designed, really. I like it better than any other kind of money." "Money has a certain kind of amnesty." "Cash. I am just not happy when I don't have it. The minute I have it I have to spend it. Yet to Warhol, making money was a wonderful process that was almost Duchampian in its hermetically-sealed logic: "Business art is the step that comes after Art. . .Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. . .Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."
With Warhol, nothing is ever as simple as the surface of the picture. And so this book, created for a young girl, both embodies the playful ambiguity and whimsicality of the gift it was intended to be, as well as a hint of genuine and serious content that makes Warhol's best works so engaging.
