Hard Cash: A History of Artists Using Money as a Metaphor—and a Medium in Their Work

As a camera rolled on a dark night on the Scottish island of Jura in August 1994, artists Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty passed a whiskey bottle back and forth while tossing £1 million into a roaring fire. The sum—more than $1.5 million at the time—was most of what they had earned as the hit music group KLF, and they were making a film. After about an hour, every bill (each a £50 note) was destroyed.
“We wanted the money,” Drummond told a crowd assembled for a