«THE BIG GAME»

In 1884 the Wall Street firm Grant & Ward collapsed. Its manager, Ferdinand Ward, had been running a swindle, and Ulysses S. Grant, who commanded the Union armies and later served as the 18th US president, lost almost everything he owned. The man who accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox in 1865 was beaten by a smooth talker with a ledger.

That story is the starting point of this piece of political pop art.

Grant is the face from the US $50 bill, cut by glitch strips that slide across his mouth. He wears a dark-blue general's uniform with a "GRANT" name tag, a "US" insignia, pilot wings and a big block of ribbons. The cloth is crawling with toy-like tanks, planes and small explosions. In his hands, dripping white paint, he holds a tangle of light-blue balloons twisted into a knot, the kind a clown ties into an animal.

Behind him is a textured gold background with hand-drawn price charts labelled BTC, Brent, CNY and ETH, plus small Mondrian-like blocks of red, blue, green, pink and black.

Artists have been painting money for a long time. Warhol made 200 One Dollar Bills in 1962. Jasper Johns painted the American flag in 1954-55 and turned a national symbol into an object you can stare at. A banknote portrait is that kind of object too, so I put war, markets and a trusted face into one frame of political pop art. I read the balloons as a promise: bright, soft and one pin away from nothing.

This original pop art painting is mixed media wall art: oil and acrylic on canvas, 120 x 90 cm, painted in 2022. It is number 4 of 8 in my second collection, SCAM, and it works as statement wall art for a room that can hold a loud picture.

Most of my original paintings are already in private collections, but I paint originals to order in any size. To ask about this one, message me on Instagram or by email. If you want this image at home in a smaller format, there is a hand-finished lithograph.