Jeff Koons was a cotton trader and 9 other things you didn't know about the connection between art and finance
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I was also struck by how many great writers and artists were tied to finance vocationally. Here's a list of the most striking connections - in quiz form. (Answers are below).
1) This musical pioneer founded the largest insurance agency of his time and his book, Life Insurance with Relation to Inheritance Tax, became a foundational work in the field of estate planning.
Benjamin Britten
Charles Ives
Aaron Copeland
Igor Stravinsky
2) In order to fund the purchase of supplies early in his career, this American artist worked as a cotton futures trader. Subsequently, he applied the lesson of futures trading - the act of selling goods one has yet to procure - in his artistic career.
Jeff Koons
Andy Warhol
Donald Judd
Chuck Close
3) This pioneer of the English novel railed against The Villainy of Stock Jobbers and considered trading stocks a "trade founded in Fraud, born of Deceit, and nourished by Trick, Cheat, Wheedle, Forgeries, Falshoods, and all sorts of Delusions." Regardless, he managed a few financial shenanigans himself as a trader and went bankrupt from transactions that included the purchase of 70 prized civet cats and the imprudent writing of shipping insurance. Ultimately, he led the campaign for changing bankruptcy laws that resulted in the first modern bankruptcy law that allowed for relief for debtors.
Henry Fielding
Daniel Defoe
Anthony Trollope
Samuel Richardson
4) This Greek philosopher is credited with creating the first options contract by paying deposits that gave him the right to rent out olive presses. During the subsequent olive growing season, he profited handsomely from acquiring these rights.
Thales
Socrates
Plato
Heraclitus
5) This poet spent eight years at Lloyds Bank during a critical phase of his life. Ezra Pound viewed the ultimate success of this poet's masterpiece as "clear proof of restriction of output, due to enforced waste of his time and energy in banking." But, the poet considered banking "very interesting and important" and his wife claimed that "he is extremely interested in finance, and I believe he has a good deal of hitherto unexpected ability in that direction."
T.S. Eliot
W.H. Auden
W.B. Yeats
Philip Larkin
6) This philosopher repeatedly employed insurance in his work to emphasize the importance of experience and declared "we are all insurance companies"?
C.S. Peirce
Bertrand Russell
N. Whitehead
William James
7) This poet saw no disconnect between his day job in insurance and poetry declaring: "Poetry and surety claims aren't as unlikely a combination as they might seem."
Langston Hughes
Wallace Stevens
E.E. Cummings
John Ashberry
Evan Agostini / AP Images
Mick Jagger
Bob Dylan
Jay-Z
Lady Gaga
9) This author drew upon his own experience selling funeral insurance when he depicted insurer Erskine Fowler in Savage Holiday.
Ralph Ellison
Richard Wright
Allan Gurganus
Paul Auster
Business Insider
Thomas Mann
Franz Kakfa
Albert Camus
Italo Calvino
Answers:
- Charles Ives
- Jeff Koons
- Daniel Defoe
- Thales
- T.S. Eliot
- C.S. Peirce
- Wallace Stevens
- Jay-Z
- Richard Wright
- Franz Kafka
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