The Money Shot: burning, falling, vanishing

'The Money Shot' explores the way that as money and financial instruments have become increasingly abstract and dematerialised, contemporary artists have investigated the visceral, affective and thoroughly material aspects of money in all its modern guises and disguises. This chapter concentrates on the tropes of burning and falling; the staging of disappearances and appearances; and the promises and implied lies of contracts. It tells the unbelievable story of the art collection of the Royal Bank of Scotland, a parable for the way that the value of artworks and financial instruments can literally disappear overnight, leaving only a few ghostly traces of what had formerly seemed so real.