Secret Buyers Get to Overpay for Hunter Biden’s Art

Hunter Biden has received some positive comments about the fruit of his new art career, which he has plied in multi-million dollar homes in Southern California, but his works are also expected to fetch as much as $500,000 — beyond what a normal fledgling artist would merit.

The scandal-plagued son of President Joe Biden has hooked up with Manhattan art dealer George Berges, who told Artnet that he plans to price Hunter’s works at an upcoming show at between $75,000 for works on paper, to a half-million dollars for large paintings.

Like the younger Biden, Berges — who has served prison time for assault with a deadly weapon — has ties to Chinese movers and shakers, according to a January article in the New York Post that first reported Hunter’s new art pursuits:

Berges, 44, regularly features works by Chinese artists and told a Chinese network that he was keen to open other art galleries in Beijing and Shanghai in 2015.

“The questions that I always had was how’s China changing the world in terms of art and culture,” Berges told the China Daily in 2014.

Berges told Fox Business that the identities of any buyers of Biden’s works would be kept anonymous.

“As with every artist,” he said, “sales are always confidential to protect the privacy of the collector.”

The transactions are a convenient way for Biden to further hide who is paying him — for anything, not just his art, as National Legal and Policy Center’s Tom Anderson told the Post back in January.

“Hunter Biden’s tangled web of shell companies, LLCs, investment vehicles, and options agreements make it virtually impossible to know where he is getting income from,” he said. “We highly doubt…a career as an artist will do anything more than act as a vehicle to further shield where that income is coming from.”

Fox Business noted that the expected compensation for Biden’s pieces seems excessive compared to what famous, established artists earn for their works:

That’s a pretty big haul when compared to other artists’ first sales. In fact, Biden’s pieces are worth more off the bat than a piece by Jean-Michel Basquiat that sold for $20,900 in 1984 – $53,770.96 in today’s dollars after adjusting for inflation

Even without formal training, Biden’s pieces carrying five- to six-figure price tags put his work in the same range as established artists in the field.

For comparison, a piece by Andy Warhol sold for $725,000 at a New York auction, only $225,000 more than a piece by the president’s son.

According to a New York Post report this week, some art experts are saying Biden’s works are “actually good,” and one longtime New York dealer, Alex Acevedo, said the pieces would garner more like $25,000 to $100,000 if he wasn’t a Biden. He expects some of the works to possibly top $1 million in the end.

“Anybody who buys it would be guaranteed instant profit,” Acevedo said. “He’s the president’s son. Everybody would want a piece of that.”

Just don’t ask who the buyers are.

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