"What Am I Bid For This Biden?"

Hunter Biden, painter?

Yes, apparently so. Joe Biden's surviving son has forsaken the law as a career an has taken up abstract painting.  His paintings, like the one below, will be offered for auction at a gallery in New York.

There's just one thing - the maximum price is set at $500,000 per painting.

Although President Biden has taken steps to ensure that Hunter's paintings cannot be used by prospective owners to get political influence with the White House, ensuring that buyers will be kept anonymous, no one thinks this exhibition/auction is a good idea.  First of all, the price.  Half a million bucks for a Hunter Biden original?  Second, the acquisition of a painting.  What's to stop an anonymous buyer from letting the world know he or she has one?

And if AOC buys one for her Washington office, that's going to be really awkward when the time comes to pass an infrastructure bill.

Walter Shaub, who was President Obama's ethics chief, thinks it would be better for Americans to know the identity of the buyers so that we know who is trying to influence the President.  "Instead of disclosing who is paying outrageous sums for Hunter Biden's artwork so that we could monitor whether the purchasers are gaining access to government, the [White House] tried to make sure we will never know who they are."  

As for me, I think I can trust the Biden White House to monitor who has a Hunter Biden painting and avoid a conflict of interest with any such owners. The problem is that most Americans don't think they can trust them, and Republicans have pre-emptively decided that they most certainly won't trust the White House - even if they can.

But never mind all that.  I think Hunter Biden's paintings - yeah, I've seen more than a couple - are good but not great, and so the $500,000 price tag for one is way over the top.  And let's be honest.  If his name were Robert Hunter, with his abilities and talents as an abstract artist, he'd likely have to sell his paintings for $500, maybe $750 at the most, and he'd have to do it not at an art gallery in Manhattan but at an outdoor arts and crafts show in a park in Montclair, New Jersey or Ann Arbor, Michigan, in a small canopy tent next to the sculptor who works with discarded tin or the shamanic chick from Maine who sells New Age crystal pendants. But his name isn't Robert Hunter.  His name is Robert Hunter Biden. 

And while he may be good, he's certainly no Paul McCartney. 😉

Hunter Biden's first solo exhibition and auction will be in October at George Bergès Gallery in New York.  If the pandemic worsens by then, social distancing may be necessary, and face coverings may be required.  In fact, even if the pandemic doesn't get worse, buyers may have to wear face coverings anyway . . . to stay anonymous.