“Make An Artist A Millionaire” – self-portrait with a negotiable instrument

$1 from one million people, people.

“Make An Artist A Millionaire” – phase 1

The money was collected in a donation box at a few gallery shows and donor names were collected. Alongside the cash, a full list of donors would be displayed. This ushered in phase two of the project: accepting donations of more than $1 from people. The reality of the situation is that it was more important to reach the million mark than to stick to the symbolism of the $1. Plus the fact that we spend more than $1 on so many petty things in daily life without a second thought: coffee, parking meters, ATM fees, etc.

“Make An Artist A Millionaire”

The medium of this project is US dollars, and the total amount would be collected (without any of it being spent for the duration of the project) and finally exhibited in cash form.

“Make An Artist A Millionaire” postcards

My project “Make an Artist a Millionaire” started in late 2008, with an obvious objective. The idea was that, in order to make better art, I needed to be able to pursue a full time art practice, and that the way to do this was to make enough money to live on for the rest of my life. A million dollars is also, of course, a symbolic amount of money and the words “millionaire” and “artist” don’t appear together very much, and usually only to perjoratively describe hated artists like Damien Hirst (who I don’t hate at all and who was actually part of the inspiration for this project.)

The very fist manifestation of MaAaM was the statement on the card above, which preemptively responded to the inevitable “why?” question with a “why not?”

“Make An Artist A Millionaire” – a contributor

“Make An Artist A Millionaire” signage

One direction MAAAM could take would be a series of performances, including sitting on the street with a cardboard sign (above); synthesizer busking at a BART train station; and roaming around with a sandwich board. All of these options would create varying levels of discomfort for me, and others, and I might not be the ideal person to execute them. (A healthy white hetero male basically panhandling to solve his art problem?) They could also represent an admission of the project's failure by not finding a compelling argument for someone donating (other than "Why not? $1 is such a small sum."). For this reason, executing them would merely be skirting the issue. This is where an idea for reconfiguring MAAAM came in: instead of trying to collect a million dollars for me, I would make another artist a millionaire with the proceeds. The original project arguably becomes something entirely different, and leeches it of much of its substance. Once the project's focus (though still not the goal) becomes generosity, it once again casts the recipient artist as a helpless, inept victim without effective personal agency. And as the agent of generosity, it puts me on the other side of the same old coin.