From the collection of:
Jacobs Collection at Georgetown College || VAM Home

This painting of a U.S. dollar bill is typical of Djawid Borower’s Portraits of Money, a series in which he lifts images from government currencies to produce portraits of familiar but generally unstudied faces. Borower renders the images on large-scale canvases in a manner typical of portraiture. While the painting is still wet, he drags a squeegee across the canvas to create a distorted, more conceptual image. The titles of these monetary portraits, taken from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow, refer to relationships of power and control. They are intended to force the viewer to think beyond the familiar image shown on the canvas.

Although Borower’s use of common cultural images aligns his work with the tenets of Pop Art, his use of persuasive, suggestive titles steer it more toward Conceptualism.

About the Artist

Born in Cologne, Germany in 1958, Djawid C. Borower now lives and works in Vienna, Austria. He studied history and philosophy at the University of Cologne in Germany and the University of Vienna. Borower is a writer as well as an artist, and his dramatic works have been performed on radio and stage in both Germany and Austria. He also has worked as a Viennese art correspondent for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: What do you make of the title Borower selected for this painting? Do you think it makes the painting easier or more difficult to understand? Does this painting make you think about or see the image on the one-dollar bill any differently?

Activity: Using images that we see every day but rarely notice, Borower focuses the viewer’s attention on something that is often overlooked—the obvious. Can you think of images or objects to which you pay little attention because you see them so frequently? Jot down your ideas and then create a detailed study of one of the images or objects on your list. Put some thought into the title of your artwork, as well. What does your title say about the image you chose to portray?

Links

Find images of Borower’s work and additional information about him at the artist’s web site.
[www.borower.com]

Read more about Borower’s currency paintings and see images from one of his exhibits at Georgetown College.
[spider.georgetowncollege.edu/art/artdept/portraits/]

$how Me the Money: The Dollar as Art, an exhibit exploring the link between art and commerce, included a work by Borower as well as by other contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol.
[www.gulfshorelifemag.com/Pages/hotstories/hotstories.asp?348]

For more about Conceptualism, consult the ArtLex entry.
[www.artlex.com/ArtLex/c/conceptualart.html]