Hunter Biden is defending his glitzy art gallery openings where his paintings were listed at upwards of $300,000 – telling an interviewer he was thrilled because ‘I wasn’t there to sell my art.’
The president’s son opens up in an interview with Vanity Fair, where the tight-lipped gallery owner who helped nurture his new career and arrange showings revealed he has brought in friends as well as big-name collectors at night for special evening viewings to avoid press scrutiny.
‘If I say who, all of a sudden the right-wing press is going to run with it, and I would be doing these people a disservice,’ said New York gallery owner George Bergès.
Wrote Vanity Fair: ‘Bergès snuck in some of his big-name collectors and art-world friends who wanted to view the exhibit in New York—but not be photographed—after dark, sending his staff home and keeping the lights dim so the shutterbugs would go home.’
The identities who purchase the paintings by the president’s son aren’t made public and are not told to the artist, in a process set up by the White House with Bergès meant to avoid the appearance of conflict – though some ethics experts said it raises serious red flags.
‘I wasn’t there to sell my art,’ Hunter Biden says of his LA gallery opening
The highly sympathetic profile does mention the ethical concerns of people by high prices to the president’s son in an industry notorious for money laundering. It reports that Bergès got death threats and had to hire security while organizing ‘The Journey Home’ art shows for Hunter.
‘It is crazier than I ever could have imagined. Everyone has lost their minds,’ he said.
Bergès would not confirm the prices that Hunter’s work sold for.
‘We are overachieving,’ he says.
Hunter claims about 95 per cent of the people at his opening were people he knew. They included such celebrities as Moby, graphic artist Shepard Fairey – who designed the famous Obama ‘Hope’ poster – and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Fairey discussed the prices Hunter was charging in the context of far more established artists.
‘There are plenty of artists that have been making work for decades whose work I like less than what I saw at Hunter Biden’s show,’ he said.
Gallery owner Geroge Berges says he and Hunter are ‘overachieving’ in sales
Some works have listed …….
