Mark Wagner (born 1976) is an American artist best known for meticulous collages made of United States banknotes, such as the portrait of Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke, composed exclusively of one-dollar bills, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery. He is co-founder of The Booklyn Artist Alliance and has published over twenty artists’ books with Bird Brain Press and X-ing Books.

Currency collage

Since 1999, Wagner has been using US banknotes to create portraits, abstractions, allegories, still lifes, and sculptures ranging in size from 2x3 inch smiling and frowning parodies of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington on the dollar, to the 17x3 feet ''Liberty'', a 2009 depiction of the Statue of Liberty using slices from over 1000 dollar bills. Lisa Dennison, Chief Curator of the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

in New York City commends Wagner's “witty and intricately detailed” work and situates his art in the longstanding tradition of artists like

Ed Ruscha Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (, ''roo-SHAY''; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography and film. He is also noted for creating severa ...

who adapt pre-existing resources to create uniquely engaging works of art. Detractors say the work can lean towards the gimmicky.

Collections

* Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris *

Boston Public Library The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, founded in 1848. The Boston Public Library is also the Library for the Commonwealth (formerly ''library of last recourse'') of the Commonwea ...

, Boston, MA *

Brooklyn Museum of Art The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Cro ...

, Brooklyn, NY *

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

, Washington, DC * Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities, Los Angeles, CA *

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

, Washington, DC *

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, NYC *

Minneapolis Institute of Art The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...

, Minneapolis, MN * Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NYC * New York Public Library, NYC *

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

, Providence, RI *

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...

, San Francisco, CA *

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

, Washington, DC * Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA *

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...

, Minneapolis, MN *

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

, NYC

Exhibitions

Wagner has had a number of solo exhibitions and participated in many group exhibitions. *Pavel Zoubok Gallery, NYC (2013, 2011, 2008) - solo exhibitions *Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Beijing, China (2012) *National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (2011) *Ronald Feldman Fine Art, NYC (2010) *Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2009) *Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2009) *FLAG Art Foundation, NYC (2008) *Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities, Los Angeles, CA (2005) *Renaissance Society / University of Chicago, IL (2004) *Parsons School of Design, NYC (2003) - solo exhibition *Yale University, New Haven, CT (2002) *Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY (2000) *Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC (2000)

Publication

*Pacific Standard Magazine, "The King of Cash," cover image, Nov., 2013 *WSJ Money Magazine, "A Yen for Art,” Mar. 9, 2013 *Harvard Business Review Russia, cover image and artwork, United Press, 2012 *The Baffler, No 19, artwork, MIT Press, Mar. 2012 *New York State lottery advertising campaign, “Money Multiplier,” Nov. 2012 *Wall Street Journal, "Mark Wagner: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" Lance Esplund, Aug. 6, 2011 *Huffington Post, "The New Moneyed Art" Adrian Brune, Aug. 4, 2011 *"Paper Promises," novel by Philip Coggan, cover image, Penguin UK, 2011 *Hyperallergic, "The Phantoms of Liberty" Howard Hurst, Jul. 13, 2011 *Newsweek, cover image, "The Capitalist Manifesto," Fareed Zakaria, Jun. 22, 2009 *Harpers Magazine, "Infinite Debt," Thomas Geoghegan, Apr. 2009 *Morning News, "Million Dollar Babies," Nicole Pasulka, Apr. 6, 2009 *New York Times, "Collages Go to College, And Behave Accordingly,” Benj. Genocchio, Dec. 16, 2007 *The New York Times, "Money Changes Everything,” Ken Johnson, Jul. 14, 2006 *Chicago Reader, "Well-Worn Text," Nov. 29, 1996

Other coverage

*http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/artist-mark-wagner-dollar-bills-million-dollar-message-article-1.1468470 *http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adrian-margaret-brune/the-new-moneyed-art_b_918483.html? *http://hyperallergic.com/29363/the-phantoms-of-liberty/ *http://paradigmmagazine.com/2011/12/12/paradigm-magazine-mark-wagner-interview/ *http://blog.library.si.edu/2012/07/concealed-in-the-rising-smoke/#.UqSRJiecxBk *http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3ABird+Brain+Press.&qt=hot_author *http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/08/mark-wagner-currency/

References

External links

*http://artsy.net/artist/mark-wagner
Artists website
*. A P.F. Pictures short of the artist at work. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wagner, Mark 1976 births Living people University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni American artists Banknotes of the United States Collage artists