David Choe, 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 optionsin the realm of, reportedly, 3.77 million shares. On Wednesday night, 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.) “Huge Congrats!! David,” a friend wrote on his Facebook wall Thursday morning. “Goddamn, are koreans smart or what!” another posted.

Whatever its other accomplishments, the metamorphosis of Choe’s IOU into millions of dollarsimmediately 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 yourmoney.)

The answer, in case you’re wondering, is “$200 million.” Consider that the oil-rich nation of Qatar just bough 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 for 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, in second place. (Although, to be fair, Choe's work wasn't sold in auction, and there's no say of knowing whether theMona Lisa or the entire Sistine Chapel ever changed hands for, say, $1 billion.)

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.”

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