A HAMBURGER and Coke with Steve Boggs was a disconcerting event. To begin with he preferred to be called “Boggs”, just straight. He also had a way of opening his eyes a little wider than normal, giving his thin face an unnerving, even devilish look. And then, when the eating was done and the bill came, he would take out his wallet, unfold the notes, and put one on the table in a way that portended something profound and strange.

At first glance, the note would look normal. It was not. The portrait on it might be of Mr Boggs himself, or Martha Washington instead of George. The bank name might be “Federal Reserve Not”, or “Bank of Bohemia”. The plate serial number might be “EMC2” or “LSD”. All this delicate copying and subverting had taken up to ten hours of Mr Boggs’s time, working on special paper with the finest-tip green and black pens. (He later shifted to limited-edition prints, a little speedier.) The result was now proffered to pay for his food.

To the bemused waitress, he would politely explain that he was an artist. He could pay her with official money if she wanted. But he believed in producing something beautiful; and having spent so much time on this drawing of money, wasn’t it worth the value it declared?

Nine out of ten times, the offer was refused. If it was accepted, Mr Boggs would note down time and place on the blank back of the drawing, ask for a receipt and take any change he was “owed”. After a day, he would call one of many avid collectors of his works; he would sell the collector, at a roughly fivefold mark-up, the receipt and change; and from those clues the collector, if he wished to buy the drawing, would have to track down the new owner. Receipt, change and drawn note, when reunited, became joint proof of the drawing’s value, confirmed by the transaction; and would then change hands, typically, for tens of thousands of dollars.

This elaborate charade ensured that Mr Boggs never sold his drawings. He “spent” them at “face value” in exchange for goods and services, cheekily challenging the value ascribed to money. The inspiration dated from 1984, when a waitress in Chicago accepted his sketch of a dollar bill on a napkin for a doughnut and a coffee. She even gave him a dime in change, which he kept as a lucky charm. After that, wherever he was in the world, he drew the local currency and threw down his challenge.

Early on he struggled, unwashed, hungry and heavily in debt. But by 1999 his drawings had paid for more than $1m-worth of goods, including rent, clothes, hotels and a brand-new Yamaha motorbike. He thanked the Swiss, who discovered him in 1986 and were often delighted to accept original art rather than “real” money.

He was cautious, however, about dealing with anyone he already knew. He preferred to offer his exchange to people who had never heard of him, even though they might just scrumple his precious note into a pocket. And his main aim was to raise disquieting questions about the notion of exchange itself. What was money really worth? What supported a dollar bill, other than faith? Was the value of anything just subjective? When salesmen told him they didn’t accept art, he would point out the beauty of official notes, with their scrolls and arrow-clutching eagles. When shopkeepers demanded only “real” money, he might launch into the non-reality of time and space, too. To his long-time tracker and biographer, Lawrence Weschler, he was “just short of being a con man—but no more so than anyone else in the art world, or for that matter in the world of finance—which, of course, is the whole point.”

Feat counterfeit

A simpler view was taken by the authorities. This looked like counterfeiting to them. In Britain, where he lived for several years, he was arrested and put on trial at the Old Bailey for “reproducing” the currency. He argued back that it was the “real” notes that were reproductions: his drawings were originals, never meant to be the real thing. He was acquitted, as he was when he faced similar charges in Australia.

America, though, hardly knew how to deal with him. In 1992 he had a madcap idea to flood Pittsburgh, where he lived then, with $1m in Boggs Bills, and see if they could get through five transactions (handlers would put thumbprints on the back). The Secret Service warned the city and raided his studio, seizing more than 1,000 pieces of work. They never returned them. The courts solemnly debated whether the drawings were closer to pornography—which might be censored, but also allowed as free speech—or evil non-returnable contraband, like drugs.

Mr Boggs’s career was blighted by fruitless appeals to try and get them back. His legal costs mounted. At his Old Bailey trial he had paid his lawyer with drawings for his services. He now started on a series of $1,000 Boggs Bills sporting a portrait of him by Thomas Hipschen, America’s chief engraver of banknotes (itself happily exchanged for a Boggs Bill), to cover a hearing in the Supreme Court, if he could get one. But he was also venturing closer to the edge, toting guns and using methamphetamines, and died before he had got that far.

His art remained on the walls of America’s finest museums and of galleries all over Europe. His questions remained, too, evading easy answers.