Hunter Biden: Selling his art to secret buyers
“The Biden administration has gone out of its way to contrast its behavior with that of the previous administration,” said John Fund in NationalReview.com. So why has it “hatched an elaborate Rube Goldberg scheme” to smooth the path for Hunter Biden’s career change from highly paid consultant to foreign businesses to highly paid artist? A New York City gallery is preparing to launch Hunter’s first solo exhibition in October, and last week the White House announced guidelines for sales of any of the 15 works. It has instructed the gallery’s owner to keep the process anonymous—even to Hunter—and reject any bids that seem suspicious or go above the asking prices, which reportedly range from $75,000 to $500,000. Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s “Orwellian” defense of the secretive auction is that it provides “a level of protection and transparency,” said Miranda Devine in the New York Post. “Indeed. So much transparency that no one is allowed to know anything.”
Art critics have reacted to Hunter’s blown-ink abstractions with “a mixture of curiosity and derision,” said Robin Abcarian in the Los Angeles Times. Jerry Saltz of New York magazine deemed them “generic post-zombie formalism illustration,” while Scott Indrisek, the former editor-in-chief of Modern Painters magazine, said the works demonstrated “a hotel art aesthetic.” Clearly, no one would care about these paintings if the artist’s father “were not the most powerful man on the planet.” You’d think Hunter would stay away from milking his father’s name after his infamous $50,000-a-month job with a Ukrainian gas company, said Kris Kolesnik in TheHill .com. Now, with the White House’s explicit thumbs-up, he has entered the art market, which a Senate report last year called a corrupt haven for Russian oligarchs seeking to elude international sanctions. “Imagine the endless conspiracy possibilities.”
Hunter Biden isn’t the first presidential relative to trade on the family name, said Karen Tumulty in The Washington Post, and the Trump children “set a new standard for shamelessness.” Still, a gallery owner’s promise to keep potential buyers of Hunter’s art anonymous hardly stops corporate or foreign powers from trying to curry favor. The buyers could out themselves to Hunter or Joe Biden afterward. If these shady sales are going to take place, let them be conducted with real transparency, “the more of it, the better.”