Wall Street Bankers Love Art About Money

The wolves of Wall Street are lining up for artist Ashley Longshore.

The nouveau riche of Wall Street no longer just want the red Ferrari, the $10,000 Hermès Birkin bag, or ten bottles of the $1,000 champagne—they want paintings of these objects, and they know who can make it happen—New-Orleans based Ashley Longshore. With the rise of the Internet and social media, it’s now incredibly easy to peek into what kind of ridiculous products wealthy people are willing to spend their money on—just take a look at tumblr, The Rich Kids of Instagram. But what is the trend for the Wall Street types? According to NY Post, it’s pop-art self-portraits.

Finance guy, Justin Brownhill and his wife, wanted a family portrait, so they gave her a list of things that defined them—a black American Express card, an Assher-cut diamond, a Birkin bag, and an Aston Martin sports car, AKA cash money. The result is a 4 by 6 foot painting showcasing what the family spends their money on, in a very literal style, with the objects plastered onto a fire-red background. “It’s a real conversation piece,” says Renee Brownhill, who has hung it prominently in the couple’s New York City flatiron loft. The painting cost the Brownhill family $30,000—it’s easy to predict where the dialogue goes from there.

The couple owns 15 works by the artist and introduced her to their other deep-pockets Wall Street friends when they hosted a New York show for her in their apartment in 2012. Other works the artist has painted are Let them Eat Chanel, which depicts Marie Antoinette-esque women eating Chanel bags, as well as another couple’s portrait that is a play on the famous American Gothic painting. Longshore’s New American Gothic, includes the couple in front of their Michigan farm house and their faceless children off to the side, with the wife holding a glass of champagne, shopping bags from Neiman Marcus and Barneys New York, as well as the husband’s gold watch and some cash on a pitchfork. Classy.

Not only are you able to purchase paintings from Longshore, but she also makes furniture, including chairs stuffed with shredded dollar bills. Uncle Sam’s Chair has $500,000 worth of shredded currency from the US Mint and will set you back $6,500 if you wish to literally, sit on your money.

Since money is the real personality definer here we suggest Hugh Scott Douglas’s currency artworks, they definitely fall into the approval matrix closer (just a little) to high brow-brilliant, whereas some of Longshore’s stuff is pretty low brow-despicable. But, hey, to each their own.


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