Art sale by Biden’s son problem for president
Ethicists wary of buyers hoping to gain favour
WASHINGTON • White House ethics experts have expressed alarm at plans to sell paintings by Hunter Biden for up to half a million dollars each.
The president’s son has reinvented himself as an artist after a turbulent struggle with addiction. is early efforts are set to go on sale at a gallery in New York this autumn with price tags of between $75,000 and $500,000.
In an attempt to counter criticism, White House officials have drawn up rules under which details of sales will be kept secret, including from the artist himself. Transactions will be handled by gallery owner Georges Berges.
A White House spokesman said: “The president has established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history.”
However, Richard Painter, former chief ethics lawyer at the White House, said it was a “really bad idea.” He warned that lobbyists and foreign governments could buy the art, trying to ingratiate themselves with the Bidens.
“The initial reaction a lot of people are going to have is that he’s capitalizing on being the son of a president and wants people to give him a lot of money. Those are awfully high prices,” Painter told The Washington Post.
Beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. But some experts have been scathing, calling his work “generic” and “hotel art.” One suggested that if Hunter Biden really wanted to be judged on his talent, rather than his last name, he should have used a pseudonym. The gallery’s website says Biden uses oil, acrylic and ink to create a “distinctively unique experience that has become signature Biden.”
But Jeffry Cudlin, art professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, told the Washington Examiner: “How much of that value is due to the art itself? That’s easy. None of it.”
Valuing Biden’s paintings at between $850 and $3,000, he said the artist had “some nascent talent.” Jerry Saltz, a New York magazine art critic, called Biden’s work “generic post-zombie formalism illustration.”
Scott Indrisek, former editor in chief of Modern Painters magazine, told The Washington Post: “I would call it very much a hotel art esthetic. It’s the most anonymous art I can imagine.”