NEW YORK, NY.- After an ambitious New York gallery announced in 2021 that it would sell Hunter Biden’s paintings for as much as $500,000, some ethics experts and House Republicans expressed concern that such high-priced works from a novice artist could become a conduit for those seeking to influence his father, the president.
Now, as Joe Biden leaves the White House and his son faces the prospect of prison, there are questions as to whether Hunter Biden’s art market, which never reached the heights first projected, is fizzling.
His contract with the gallery has expired, his customer base has remained small and his father, whose stature as president helped fuel interest in Biden’s work, will soon have a much lower profile.
“Over time, I think his market will probably wash away,” said Charlie Horne, president of Gurr Johns, an art valuation and advisory firm. “His cachet will be short-lived. I don’t think he’s ever gotten real traction.”
Just 10 people bought Biden paintings from the Georges Bergès Gallery that had been representing him in recent years, according to testimony at a congressional hearing earlier this year. One of them, Kevin Morris, a Hollywood lawyer and a friend of Biden, bought 11 works for $875,000, or more than half of the roughly $1.5 million gained from the sales, according to the testimony, in January. There have been no indications of any sales since then.
It is unclear the extent to which Biden, 54, would be able to paint if imprisoned on the gun and tax crimes for which he was convicted. But he made clear in a statement that he intends to continue pursuing a passion that he has credited with helping rescue him from the depths of a crack cocaine addiction.
“All I know,” the statement said, “is that tomorrow I’m going to wake up and find time to make art. And I will practice my art every day that I am able for the rest of my life, regardless of whether I ever sell another painting.”
Biden’s emergence as an artist came later in his life and he has not had formal training. But he has described art as something he enjoyed making even as a child.
Georges Bergès, who runs the gallery that bears his name, remains a fan of Biden’s work, though he no longer formally represents him. He has described the paintings as full of hope and perseverance and the style as noteworthy for “its mastery of color and form, and most importantly, its authenticity.”
Other reviews have been more muted.
Todd Levin, an art adviser, said he thought Biden might have a tough time drawing attention going forward. “Nobody is taking his art seriously,” he said.
Jason Farago, an art critic for The New York Times, took a look at a solo exhibition of Biden’s work in 2021 and found the show “more substantial than an amateur’s dabbling.” Still, it wasn’t, he wrote, “the sort of exhibition that would make a current M.F.A. student feel jealous or unsophisticated by comparison.”
Though Biden’s prices never soared as predicted, his works still sold for amounts as high as $85,000. Those prices drew the attention of House Republican leaders, who questioned Bergès and others in January about whether Biden’s customers were likely people looking to use the art to curry favor with the president.
Bergès, who made small, recurring donations to Donald Trump in 2020 totaling less than $500, and has also donated a smaller amount to Democrats, told the lawmakers that he did not believe any of the buyers had purchased the art to influence the president. He said that, to avoid conflicts of interest, the gallery had attempted to shield Hunter Biden from the identity of buyers, but Biden had independently, for various reasons, learned the names of three of them, though not because they had sought influence. The names of those three purchasers — Morris; Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a Democratic donor; and William Jacques, a part owner of the Bergès gallery — had become public. Their purchases account for nearly $1.1 million of the $1.5 million in art sold. The other seven buyers have not been identified.
House Republican leaders, who have scrutinized Hunter Biden’s other business dealings, pressed forward in a letter in February in which Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan said that “the high-dollar sales of paintings by a novice like Hunter Biden raise considerable suspicion given his years of peddling access to his father and capitalizing on the Biden name.”
The lawmakers raised questions, for example, about two art purchases by Naftali, a real estate investor who contributed regularly to the Joe Biden campaign. She bought two of Hunter Biden’s paintings, for $42,000 and $52,000, and at least one of the purchases preceded her appointment by the president to an unpaid position on a federal panel.
Naftali’s lawyer called the speculation “baseless,” asserting that her appointment had actually been initiated by the former House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
The business dealings of presidential relatives have long drawn scrutiny, such as Billy Carter’s introduction of Billy Beer during the Carter administration and the Trump family’s dealings during the Trump administration.
Morris, who in addition to buying Biden’s art has lent him more than $6 million, took aim at those who have questioned the underpinnings of Biden’s success as an artist.
“Perhaps the cruelest part of his story,” he said in a statement, “is the malicious attacks on his artwork and on those who have dared to buy his paintings. The political commentators on Fox and Republican members of Congress whom have so belittled his work know nothing about art. Imagine being prohibited from displaying and selling your artwork because of politically motivated and baseless allegations all intended to destroy your life.”
Several experts said they thought Hunter Biden might retain the interest of some art buyers because his work has a bit of a buzz. Though he does not have the natural fan base of other celebrity painters like Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Depp or Jim Carrey, there is, they said, a novelty aspect to his work.
Natasha Degen, chair of art market studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, said that, while his celebrity status might recede after his father leaves office, there is also the chance that those wishing to show continued support for the outgoing president and his son might continue to pursue the art.
“The value is perhaps not intrinsic to the works themselves,” she said. “There was certainly a disconnect between the price and the critical reception of the work. But Biden’s art provided a means to express support.”
Bergès opted not to renew Hunter Biden’s contract last fall, because, he has said, he needed to focus on the other artists his gallery represented and that the attention his gallery had drawn, including death threats, had been overwhelming. He said he is not aware that any other gallery now represents Biden. But he said he holds some of the paintings and would sell them if buyers approach. He cautioned against judging Biden’s popularity as a painter by the small sample size of the people who bought through his gallery.
“His market was tempered by external forces and by our own doing in an attempt to not even give the appearance of impropriety — putting Hunter at a disadvantage as an artist,” he said. “So if his market was small over the last four years, it was by design.”
Horne, the art adviser, was not as optimistic. He said he felt that Biden’s market had been buoyed by his proximity to a celebrity like his father, and will be more affected by the end of the Biden presidency than the criminal sanctions he faces.
“His father is no longer relevant in the maelstrom that is politics,” Horne said. “And I think that will hurt the son’s art more than the convictions.”
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
