Have you ever thought of money in quite the same way before this case? That pound note, Harold Wilson’s pound in your pocket, crumpled and grubby and going all too quickly at the supermarket, has a kind of beauty, which is brought out by my client because he is an artist and not a forger. Take the portrait of the Queen on a banknote. In the Boggs drawing, Her Majesty takes on a much more human quality. No longer is she a mass-produced image. An artist has actually laboured to give her life, adding lipstick and a touch of eye-shadow and a look that lends a radiance which is lacking in the ordinary banknote. His work is saying that the Bank of England is fortunate that it has a fragrant Head of State, above political controversy, to lend dignity and credibility to its currency. Not some failed political leader or furry animal. The Bank of Denmark puts squirrels and ducks on its banknotes. France features composers of second-rate music, Germany eagles and sailing ships, Australia sheep and kangaroos. The Central African Republic has a picture of Emperor Bokassa, known to eat small children, while America has Ulysses Grant – an incompetent and corrupt president – on its fifty dollars, and on its most valuable $1,000 banknote it features Grover Cleveland, who infamously ordered troops to fire on striking railway workers. We feel more comfortable, do we not, members of the jury, with the Queen rather than with an engraving of Mrs Thatcher?
I have realised every law student’s dream. It is November 1987 and I am addressing a jury in Court No. 1 of the Old Bailey, a vast and imposing forum lined with sombre wooden benches sweeping up to a high platform on which sits, centre-stage, a ‘red judge’, ushered in by attendants holding swords and maces. Behind and above me is the packed public gallery. Beyond the oak table before me sits the jury, perched above the press bench crammed with journalists. To my left, in mid-court, is the nation’s largest dock, built to hold gangs of traitors or bank robbers. Its high panelling almost obscures the defendant and the armed prison officers who flank him as he sits on that chair once occupied by traitors like Roger Casement and William ‘Lord Haw Haw’ Joyce. The young American with a thin face and long matted hair is on trial for a kind of treason: he has defied the Bank of England and dared to paint pictures of the currency of the realm.
The work of J S G (Stephen) Boggs is propped against the table. in the well of this historic criminal courtroom, where people in his position were once regularly taken out and hanged – on a gallows rather than in an art gallery. Pictures of British banknotes – some five-feet high, some life-size and framed under glass – range from the now-defunct one pound to fivers and tenners and fifties. At first blush, they look to be closely copied, although they are generally signed ‘J S G Boggs’ rather than ‘Robin Leigh Pemberton’ and have other differences which the evidence in the case will exhaustively explore. Since they are obviously artworks rather than legal tender, none of the law’s familiar constructs – from the man on the Clapham Omnibus to the moron in a hurry – would accept them at face value. So why is Boggs occupying the country’s most important courtroom?
The answer lies, as a matter of language, in Section 18 of the 1981 Forgery and Counterfeiting Act, which makes it a crime to ‘reproduce on any substance whatsoever, and whether or not on the correct scale, any British currency note or any part of a British currency note’.
On one view (the prosecution’s) this is exactly what Boggs has done. He has ‘reproduced’ banknotes in the sense laid down by the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines ‘reproduction’ as ‘a representation in some form or by some means of the essential features of the thing’. He has most certainly reproduced parts of British currency notes – their serial numbers, for example, as the judge will emphasise repeatedly to the jury. The judge thinks that this is the most open-and-shut case he has ever tried, and cannot understand why the defendant has not been told by his counsel to plead guilty. One reason is that plain English words have nuances and can be open to different interpretations, and I have found a sense in which a reproduction is not a ‘reproduction’, an argument for saying, of a picture of a pipe, ‘Ceci n’est pas un pipe’. So I plough on:
When Andy Warhol depicts tins of Campbell’s soup, more precisely than Boggs depicts banknotes, he does not ‘reproduce’ the label on Campbell’s soup. He is presenting an image which makes people think about mass-production and common experiences and advertising messages, about being left on the shelf in a supermarket society; in short, about their life, rather than about the nutritional ingredients of Campbell’s soup. When Van Gogh, that anguished and tormented artist, painted a picture of irises, he could have had no idea that in 1987 his picture would be sold for £25 million to Alan Bond. A life-size photograph, a true ‘reproduction’, can be bought for a few pounds. So can real irises. For £25 million you could have thousands of real irises delivered every day for the rest of your life. The Bank of England would say, ‘Oh, that Van Gogh original is a reproduction of the irises growing in a field in the South of France in the spring of 1876’. The art critic might say the picture is not about irises at all, it’s about human anguish, about rage against the squalor and shortness of our life compared with the eternal beauty and refulgence of nature. We don’t know what Mr Bond thinks. It may be no more than a good investment, or a reminder that he has more money than other people. And money brings us back to Boggs. What is he saying, when he talks like Van Gogh of ‘bleeding into his pictures’?
Van Gogh had not said this while being interviewed by police officers under caution. Boggs had been arrested by a flying squad of senior detectives who burst into the gallery, seized his work from the walls and deposited it in the back of the car in which they drove the artist to the nearest police station. This was an event you would expect in Dr Husak’s Czechoslovakia. The artist who provoked it was not a political dissident or a pornographer but a mild-mannered humorist who occupied a bed-sit studio in Hampstead, and was holding his first exhibition at the ‘Young Unknowns’ Gallery. He became a ‘Young Known’ as a result of the raid, but notoriety was not at first his objective. His was a talent to footnote, before Scotland Yard gave it international recognition.
Boggs had been born in New Jersey and had studied art in London, but his inspiration came on a visit to Chicago’s Art Expo, as he waited for the bill in a coffee shop, idly doodling a copy of a one-dollar bill on his table napkin. ‘Wow, that’s great,’ said his waitress – a muse in uniform – as she presented him with a 90¢-bill for his cup of coffee. ‘Can I buy it?’ ‘It’s not for sale,’ snapped Boggs – then, softening at her disappointment, he agreed she could have the drawing of the dollar in payment for his coffee. As he was leaving, she called out, ‘Wait, you’re forgetting your change’ and handed him a ten-cent piece. This dime he kept, under glass, much as billionaires frame the first dollar they ever earned. For this transaction in the Chicago coffee shop inspired a form of performance art which was to bring Boggs to the attention of the art world, of intellectual journals, and of the police of three continents. As the New Yorker put it after the trial, in the first of a series of articles on his life and work: ‘What is art? What is money? What is the one worth and what the other?’
Boggs became fascinated by paper money, travelling through Europe to gather banknotes which he used as models in his garret in Hampstead, painstakingly transferring their images to canvases large and small. Having completed a ‘Boggs’, he would then go out and ‘spend’ it, offering it at its face value to pay for what he purchased at pubs and restaurants and shops. This performance was an essential part of giving ‘value’ to the work, once he happened upon a shopkeeper or barman with the imagination of the Chicago waitress who appreciated the banknote as ‘art’ of sufficient merit to accept it at face value and give him the change. The final act was to call an art dealer – in London or Basle or New York, who had clients who ‘valued’ his work – to announce that a drawing had been ‘spent’. Days later, the barman or shopkeeper whose faith in the artist had caused them to exchange real money for the drawing would be rewarded by a call from a connois
seur offering to buy the picture for hundreds of real pounds. If they sold – and a few, remarkably, did not – the entire transaction would be ‘mounted’ in a gold frame: the drawing, together with the evidence of its value which the connoisseur would purchase from Boggs: namely the shop bill and the change (which he kept for this eventuality). Boggs the wealth-creator remained poor, and this was part of the joke. It was on him when his completed ‘works’ sold for several thousand pounds. And now the joke was on me, since I was representing him on legal aid, rather than accepting the notes he offered to draw to cover my fees.
The art of Boggs was amusing and original, and self-evidently harmless. You could interpret it as satire on the over-pricing and over-prizing of modern art, the reductio ad absurdum of which was to paint and exhibit the very thing which pretentious people collect modern art in order to flaunt, namely their possession of large amounts of money. Or you could interpret it as homage to that human quality upon which both art and money depend, namely the faith and trust reposed in them by their consumers. Boggs was not lacking in respect for the currency, and his notes were always sold for more than they were notionally worth. His was not the hubristic art of Picasso, who boasted that the cheques he signed had never been cashed because his signature alone was worth more than the amount. Nor was it as exquisite as the work of Marcel Duchamp, from which to some extent it derived: Duchamp had settled his dentist’s bill by ‘drawing’ a large cheque and signing it, and having it accepted by the overjoyed orthodontist. Duchamp had not asked for change, but Boggs was working in the more mercenary era of Mrs Thatcher. To suggest that what he was doing was a serious crime called for accusers entirely lacking in humour, imagination and common sense. It called, in other words, for the principals of the Bank of England.
These bureaucrats had read about Boggs and they did not like what they read, especially since they read it in their house journal, the Daily Telegraph. It was not just that he was reproducing the currency: he had compounded his crime by failing to obtain their permission. When respectable advertisers broke the law against reproducing the currency, as Saatchi and Saatchi once did in a massive way with photographs of banknotes used in nationwide publicity for Silk Cut cigarettes, the Bank accepted their apologies and never dreamt of launching a prosecution. But the artist was different. The artist was unreliable, subversive and American – definitely not ‘one of us’. That is why the Bank of England decided that Scotland Yard should seize Boggs and destroy his works of art.
The case seems, on reflection, an object lesson in how foolishly people in authority can react if teased. In August 1986 the Daily Telegraph reported from New York the success of a British resident, J S G Boggs, who had interested galleries in that city in his work. ‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong in an artist making money,’ quipped Boggs. ‘Everybody else makes money.’ To this good-humoured piece was appended a footnote – ‘our legal correspondent writes’ – referring to Section 18 of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act and pointing out delicately that since he did not have written permission from the Bank, ‘Mr Boggs may have been inadvertently committing a criminal offence by drawing his sterling banknotes’. When Boggs read this, he wrote a grovelling letter to the Governor of the Bank of England apologising for overlooking Section 18, explaining the nature of his work and requesting permission to continue. He received an immediate refusal. For future reference, however, he was sent the Bank of England’s rules on reproduction, which are themselves an absurdist classic:
The Bank think it proper to draw to the attention of those wishing to seek their approval to make reproductions that they have been advised by Leading Counsel that the preparation and reproduction of artwork for the purpose of seeking the Bank’s consent is itself an offence under Section 18(1) insofar as they reproduce a Bank of England note.
This was positively Gilbertian: an artist could not draw the currency without the Bank’s consent, and he could not obtain that consent without submitting a drawing; since drawing the currency without the Bank’s consent was an offence, however, he could not draw the currency in order to obtain the Bank’s consent. What he could do if he really insisted upon trying the Bank’s patience was to submit in triplicate a sketch of his proposed artwork, leaving the proposed area of the banknote blank. The Bank might, if the spirit moved it, then authorise the artist to complete the sketch, but only for the purpose of obtaining the Bank’s approval to paint a picture based on the sketch (which would then have to be destroyed). On one overriding consideration, the Bank was very clear: ‘Decisions which might be seen by the public as lowering the dignity or prestige of the currency will not be permitted’.
In the Bank’s opinion, the public would not perceive the use of notes in Silk Cut advertisements as lowering their dignity: perhaps it respected drugs as a source of wealth. Art was another matter, a trade in which the value of the money depicted depended upon an appreciation of the worth of the depiction: and the more money is contemplated, the more it might be seen as, for example, the root of all evil. No artist could possibly comply with the Bank’s conditions for obtaining approval, which explains the absence of money – coins and banknotes – as a subject in modern British art, or even as a peripheral detail. So it has come about that our art omits almost all reference to the main preoccupation of our people, and to the standard by which its own value is measured. There had been healthy satire of the Bank and its pretensions in the early nineteenth century – James Gillray’s Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, for example – but very little since, after the law now enshrined in Section 18 was passed.
Boggs pleaded with the Bank after its refusal, urging that ‘the nature of my work is entirely optimistic about the value and function of money’. He sent them slides of his paintings: they replied, contemptuously, that the slides were also ‘reproductions’ which contravened Section 18. They destroyed the slides and called Scotland Yard: three meetings followed in quick succession between ‘principals’ (i.e. senior executives) of the Bank and senior policemen, summoned to do something about the threat from Boggs. A very English compromise was agreed and formally minuted: ‘The meeting decided to take no action against Boggs unless he drew attention to himself again.’ The very next day, a front-page article in the Independent announced that Boggs was about to exhibit in the ‘Young Unknowns’ Gallery. It was, horribile dictu, illustrated by a Boggs drawing. The bankers were livid: they wanted Boggs’s head on a plate if he raised it again. No fewer than three inspectors from the Forgery and Counterfeiting Squad were detailed to lead the raid on the gallery.
The word ‘gallery’ conjures up the spacious art showrooms of Mayfair: the ‘Young Unknowns’ inhabits a small shop (formerly a butcher’s) in The Cut, between the Old Vic and the Young Vic. The detectives realised that there was no time to lose if the public were to be spared its display of unlawful art: they set off in three police cars and arrived just as Boggs was holding forth to a TV news team, which providentially filmed his arrest and the ransacking of the tiny gallery. Boggs and his artworks were marched past the Old Vic and placed in a police car – the art in the boot – while another police team raided his flat. At Southwark Police Station, the Detective Chief Inspector cautioned the suspect and interrogated him thus:
Chief Inspector: This afternoon from the Young Unknown’s gallery, I took possession of a number of drawn items which resembled Bank of England currency. Did you paint or draw these items?
Boggs: The works of art are original works from my own hand and are not reproductions, nor are they currency.
Chief Inspector: But you agree that some of the items contain many if not all of the detail of Bank of England currencies?
Boggs: A painting of a horse may contain depictions of details created by God, yet you would not place a saddle on that painting.
Chief Inspector: This appears to me to be a painting of a £10 note. It appears to my mind to be an attempt to reproduce an item similar to genuine British currency. Did you draw or paint that artic
le?
Boggs: It is my job to allow my thoughts and feelings to be expressed and communicated through the visual work of my hands. For art to be true and just and honest, I must allow my inner self out.
Chief Inspector: Did you draw or paint it?
Boggs: Inspector, I truly don’t mean to be difficult. The work originates in a hidden and subconscious part of my being. I’ve gone into my mind to the place where art originates and it is a very expansive place: I am only just beginning to explore it.
Chief Inspector: Did you, with your hand, with a pen, pencil or paintbrush, irrespective of the reasons, paint, draw or colour this item?
Boggs: If you are asleep and you have a dream, are you then responsible for the creation of that dream? I have bled onto this piece of work.
Chief Inspector: It appears to me that certain criminal offences have been committed, in particular, producing reproductions of Bank of England notes, without authority. I must again caution you that you are not obliged to say anything but what you do say will be taken down in writing and given in evidence.
Boggs: I am an artist, not a criminal. If I have committed an offence it is the crime of being born which was not my choice.
The police had stopped his television interview, seized most of his artwork, searched his home and car and even visited his local Midland bank manager in Hampstead, who had been hoping to mount the exhibition – ‘Art is wealth’ – after it finished at the ‘Young Unknowns’. I had the distinct feeling, when I came to examine these sensible policemen a year later, that they felt the Bank had over-reacted. The penny must have dropped when they took a closer look at one of the exhibits they seized from the gallery – a ‘Coat of Money’, made of apparently forged Bank of England notes, each in the sum of six pounds. When it was realised that this denomination has never existed, common-sense reasserted itself and Scotland Yard declined to prosecute. The Bank of England disagreed. Boggs had defied them and had to be punished, so they used the police evidence to mount a private prosecution.
The Justice Game Page 33