Numismatic art

One of the cool things about coins is that they have many different
kinds of appeals, from the pleasure in looking through those pennies
to buying at auction an 1804 dollar. What's appeals most to me is the
looking, and the greatest part of the pleasure here is in the
aesthetics.

The quality of the artwork on coinage varies greatly. I'm talking here
not about the beauty of the subject matter but the skill in presenting
it and making it evocative. Many people think the Churchill crown, for
instance, is an ugly coin, but it depicts well, and evocatively,
Winston's craggy countenance, which was part of his charm.
Representationalism like this is honest, and appealing.

Much numismatic artwork isn't representational but idealized, which
can be evocative too. There's pleasure in looking at what has been
considered the ideal female or male visage and at looking at a
historical figure whose features are "perfected."

Still other numismatic artwork is deliberately abstracted. Much as the
Impressionists and Expressionists deviated from the exact
representation of forms in their paintings and sculpture, some die
engravers have done the same. The ancient Celts are particularly known
for this, but others also have created abstract coin art, including
the ancient Thracians.

Here's the single most evocative coin in my collection with an
abstract art style, a Thracian tetradrachm. It's the coin on the
bottom. The coin on the top is the representational depiction of the
same subject matter, a Thasos tetradrachm:

http://rg.ancients.info/thracetets

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Coin Collecting: Consumer Guide: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Glomming: Coin Connoisseurship: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Bogos: Counterfeit Coins: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos