Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s scandal-rich son whose latest project is to sell his paintings for up to $500,000 in an open door to influence peddling accusations against his family, produces works that resemble the “kind of art in coffee shops, and some of it is OK and a lot of it is bad,” explained Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee of The Washington Post.
“You wouldn’t,” he said in a recent interview, “unless you were related to the artist, spend more than $1,000 on it.”
Now several other art experts interviewed essentially agreed, in a report by Fox News.
Art critic Geoffrey Young said the paintings are better then he expected, but he said the price isn’t supported by the product.
“Traditionally, young artists are a bargain, and if they begin to sustain a career, gallerists raise the prices incrementally, as they should,” he said in an interview with Politico.
“Paintings are only as valuable as what some customer will pay for ‘em… he’s complexly famous, but not yet for art. Guess people will pay for a known last name,” he speculated.
The Fox report described Hunter Biden’s work as “overpriced,” and noted an expert confirmed, “What is being sold is the Biden name.”
Hunter’s paintings, officials have announced, are expected to be priced from $75,000 to $500,000.
“Their assessments will likely add to what is a growing ethics problem for President Biden,” Fox warned.
Young said the prices are similar to those for works from established artists like Dana Schultz, Alice Neel and Stanley Whitney.
Art critic Ben Davis said art dealers may be using “bluff and bluster” to boost the prices, and critic Tabish Khan noted, “In the case of anyone who has a celebrity name outside of art, as with Hunter Biden, it’s clearly the name of the artist that’s driving the price and if it sells, then that’s probably also the motivating factor for the person who buys it.”
He said if he ever would have that type of financial resources, he “wouldn’t spent it on a work by Hunter Biden.”
John Ploff teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago, said buyers were “paying for the brush with fame,” which he said, is “like a campaign contribution.”
The White House claims it will keep the identifies of art buyers secret so there is potential for influence-selling, but as Hunter Biden has promised to attend shows where he could meet potential buyers, how that could be done is not clear.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki claimed that Hunter Biden has the right to pursue an artistic career and the prices will be handled by gallerists, with “any offer out of the normal course” being “rejected out of hand.”
How that would happen hasn’t been explained, either.
Smee earlier explained, “Not trying to be unkind (no one is interested in my idea of universal truth either, as far as I know) but I’m not sure how interested I am at the moment in Hunter Biden’s idea of universal truth. I mean, give me a break. What is he? A Bodhisattva? A guru? He may have figured out some stuff for himself, and that’s great. But if I’m searching for universal truths, there are other people I’ll go to first.”
Hunter Biden’s previous scandals have included drug battles, his removal from the military and his various overseas business arrangements, which sometimes reportedly have involved Joe Biden, identified in one situation as the “big guy” lined up for a 10% cut.
Hunter Biden’s deals also reportedly had him traveling on Air Force Two, while Joe Biden was vice president, to China and Mexico to conclude his private deals.
One in which Joe Biden apparently intervened directly for the benefit of his son was when Hunter Biden was being paid – even without expertise in the industry – to be on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
The company was under investigation for corruption at the time.
Joe Biden openly boasted of threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid if Ukraine’s president did not fire the country’s top prosecutor, Victor Shokin, who at the time was investigating Burisma for corruption.
A French website reported Shokin later filed a criminal complaint naming Joe Biden and accusing him of committing a “criminal offense” in his campaign to get Shokin fired.
Washington Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York recently explained that the stories about Hunter Biden’s dealings are so important:
“Remember a key fact here: Joe Biden has said repeatedly that he never knew about his son’s business dealings. If what [New York Post columnist Miranda] Devine is reporting is correct, Biden made those claims after having financially benefited from his son’s business dealings and after having been a part of some of his son’s business events. Again: The Hunter Biden laptop story is not about Hunter Biden. It’s about Joe Biden,” he wrote.
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