According to the author of this book, there is yet another monetary crisis upon us: "The issue of images - the expression of the aesthetic iconology of money together with the economics of art - remains a life - and - death matter. The need is urgent for reworking the history of art and of money." Goodness. One turns anxiously back through its 130 pages of turgid text, 70 pages of footnotes and references for clues to help solve this crisis, only to be baffled further. Then the author offers the rather inadequate solution in the book's last sentence: "If the vexed relation between aesthetics and economics discussed in Art and Money is to be better understood, the first step may be to resist, where art and money are concerned, coming to easy terms." Ah, so there is no easy solution.

What we are given instead is a four-chapter essay of confused ideas, abstruse examples and convoluted thoughts, held together by a series of poorly reproduced mono and colour illustrations of works of art and details of an obscure and less than self-explanatory nature. Illustrative captions are missing to catch one's attention and guide one into the text; details are stretched over full pages as grey smudges of little value. Here we have the goddess Danae stretched across a page as gold coins rain from the sky. According to the author, this is telling evidence for the currency of the annunciation of the Virgin Mary, the gold coins symbolic of God's semen. Even Gustav Klimt embraced this intriguing myth and produced a quivering Danae curled up under the shower of golden coins, unfortunately here reproduced in dull, faded colour. This is typical of the rambling nature of the book. In another instance the halo is discussed in great detail, that Christian device used to elevate an object or person from the commonplace. It is a fascinating concept, here lost to the author's final conclusion: "A history of Christian painting could be written in terms of how, through the centuries, the gilt halo was gradually eliminated from the artwork, becoming instead the gilt frame that defines and surrounds the artwork."

Further to the point (no pun intended) we are given a strange yet riveting account of the fate of the Holy Foreskin as an example of the trade in holy relics. If Christian relics are, as the author contends, problematic, then as an example of intellectual and religious currency this is surely the most bizarre. There had long been a tradition of holy relics of an organic nature (Christ's blood, tears, urine and even faeces - which were pronounced "dead"). But his foreskin took preeminence, treasured as it was for its healing qualities. Mary had salvaged this, her "most precious jewel", and entrusted it to St John until seven centuries later it surfaced at the court of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, resting in a golden purse-shaped reliquary that became the fashionable model for purses throughout Christendom.

Then we are given a long explication on the use and iconography of communion wafers. Here is religious currency with a difference, produced by stamping flour into intricate die molds with changing and at times controversial patterns. Here, the author contends, is a striking parallel to the die-cast production of money, which is an interesting analogy. The final chapter, "America: representation and exchange", is just as confused, throwing together elements of modern aesthetics, the concept of fetishism, examples of contemporary minimal and conceptual art using monetary themes, the idea of "pretty money" (money as sculpture) and money as the devil with a disparate series of examples and poorly chosen works of art. Surely Marcel Duchamp's bogus cheque to his dentist, drawn on "The Teeth's Trust Company" had a deeper and more profound intention than a slight practical joke.

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While the book throws up numerous intriguing paradoxes surrounding art and economics and tries to be coherent, it will surely fail to grip the general reader and only annoy the specialist.

Rodney Engen writes books on 19th-century British art and is a consultant to Christie's, London.

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