ARTS FEATURE
Facebook’s Millionaire Graffiti Artist
When the company goes public, David
Choe, who painted its headquarters and
got paid in stock options, will become
very, very rich. Jimmy So looks at the
man and his art.
David Choe must have had a Kafkaesque morning,
waking up to find himself changed in his bed into a
monstrous millionaire. Seven years ago, the graffiti
artist painted murals on the walls of Facebook’s first
offices in Palo Alto, California, and, according to
The New York Times, he was paid in stock options
in the realm of, reportedly, 3.77 million shares. One
day, the social network announced that it will seek
an initial public offering, and at an estimated $53 a
share, you can do the math on Choe’s net worth.
(He clearly did.)
Whatever its other accomplishments, the metamorphosis of Choe’s IOU into millions of dollars immediately addresses the obvious and always-essential
question: “Is David Choe a great artist, or the greatest artist?” (You were expecting: “What will you do
with the money?” Who cares? It’s not your money.)
The answer, in case you’re wondering, is “$200 million.” Consider that the oil-rich nation of Qatar just
brought the most expensive painting ever—one of
the Cézanne Card Players—for $250 million. Before
this hot-blooded sale, the closest anyone ever came
was a $140-million purchase in 2006, and it was a
Jackson Pollock. A de Kooning sold for $137.5 million in the same bullish, pre-recession year; a Klimt,
too, for $135 million. Van Gogh is up there, and so
is Renoir. And Picasso. And Warhol. It’s quite good
company, and Choe is right up there, with the silver
medal. (Although, to be fair, Choe’s work wasn’t
sold in auction, and there’s little way of knowing
whether other privately owned art ever changed
hands secretly for much more money than that.)
Born in Los Angeles in 1976 to Korean immigrant
parents, Choe told online magazine Pixelsurgeon
that he was introduced to graffiti when he was encouraged to channel his teenage anger—hitherto
exhibited through bike thefts and shoplifting—by
spraying graffiti on bus benches and alleyways. He
began drawing at an early age, and in an autobiographical essay in his 2010 monograph, he wrote
that “in my art class frank sinatra’s grand daughter
[sic] sat to my right and sammy davis jr.’s adopted
son sat to my left.” From the text, one gets a sense
of his ambivalence toward his Korean heritage and
an urge to justify a destructive proclivity: “I hated
everyone and was filled with an intense rage and
anger mostly towards Persians and privelleged [sic]
kids who didn’t understand humility. … The idea of
anarchy ruled me … 2 weeks later it all came true.”
Written by Cha-Ching.
page 31 | Issue #59