$108 Bill 1973

Oyvind Fahlstrom made this $108 Bill. It’s a drawing, and it feels like a proposal, a plan for something, or maybe a kind of a game. The approach to mark making here, is sort of obsessive, like cartoonish, and it reminds me of the way kids will draw money, or how money is depicted in comics. What I like is the way the artist is just trying to represent something we all know so well – money – but it all comes out a bit warped and unreal. And then there are these small additions. I like the way that Fahlstrom’s drawing makes money seem really weird. There’s something about how, in the lower section of the drawing, the tiny figures seem to be climbing all over each other, like they're struggling to build a little ziggurat, or something. The whole thing is very playful. Like the work of Red Grooms, Fahlstrom’s art seems to delight in exploding the familiar.