Andy Warhol: Dollar Signs

Few images distill Warhol's vision as completely as the dollar sign. Asked once what he loved most, the artist answered by painting money — first in 1962, when a hand-painted dollar bill became the subject of his earliest experiments in screen printing, and again in 1981, when he returned to the motif with renewed intensity. The resulting Dollar Sign series, debuted at Leo Castelli Gallery in January 1982, arrived at the dawn of the Reagan era, capturing a moment when art and capital became inseparable in the American imagination.

The series marks a notable departure within Warhol's oeuvre. Rather than appropriating found imagery, Warhol drew each dollar sign by hand, lending the works a gestural, painterly energy that anticipates his late career. Rendered in electric color on Lenox museum board, each screen print elevates the ultimate symbol of commerce into an icon of Pop — at once a celebration and a sly critique of the culture that consumes it.

Warhol said it best himself: "Good business is the best art." The market has agreed — an original canvas from the series achieved £9.9 million ($15.4 million) at Sotheby's in 2015, affirming the Dollar Signs' status among the most coveted images of his final decade.