Executed nearly two decades after the first of Warhol's money paintings, the single Dollar Sign series of the early 1980s provides the ultimate expression of his lifelong fascination with consumerism. Like Warhol's first Pop paintings which examined the relationship between big business and the common man through enlarged icons of consumerism like Coca Cola and Campbell's Soup, Warhol here similarly takes the currency of this relationship and presents it with all the brazen euphoria synonymous with that decade. No longer taking the entire bill as their subject but instead focusing upon the unabashed icon of money – the isolated '$' – Warhol hones in on arguably the biggest brand of all. One of the most recognisable logos anywhere in the world, the '$' sign is simultaneously a symbol of the American Dream and an international denominator for wealth. Isolated on a rich lavender ground, the currency symbol takes on an almost totemic status.

Pulsating through the saturated layer of pure colour, off-set multiple impressions of the '$' motif in shades of red, orange, green and gold appear to throb against the background. Filling the entire height of the small-scale canvas, this oversized symbol of wealth is rendered with the immaculate claritys of Warhol's perfected silkscreen technique. Money became an obsession for Warhol, and was perhaps his personal biography that drew him to the subject; the artist’s childhood was spent in depression-era Pittsburgh before fleeing to New York City.

A playful and colorful distillation of Warhol’s core artistic concerns, Dollar Sign mirrors the artist’s own transformation into an icon of contemporary art and international commercial success. At a t.mes when art was still perceived as an arena for intellectual exclusivity, beyond the vulgar realm of monetary value, Warhol’s deliberate depiction of an instantly recognizable symbol of mass culture – the American dollar – seemed to openly celebrate and embrace consumerism and pop culture. Like his Marilyn and Elvis paintings, Warhol's dollar paintings are all about desire. Within a society immersed in the pursuit of wealth, his art had become an acquisition that conferred status on its collects or. It both intrigued and amused the American artist that his art possesses powers similar to money, as it is capable of stimulating desire and imagination simultaneously.