I mean, I can think of 74M who didn’t seem to mind and 82M that minded a whole lot. What is your point? Because nobody in this thread has said so far that it’s okay when the Trumps do it.
It’s different because with Hunter the worry is that he’s selling access to the white house and using his ‘art’ to launder illegal transactions that point to influence peddling.
If Ivanka Trump was selling mundane dresses for half a million dollars, and the Trump White House worked hard to make sure no one could ever know who the buyers were, and Ivanka had a history of brokering deals woth foreign governments, the I guarantee you every Democrat on this board would have screamed bloody murder.
Lots of children of famous people try to make bank off their famous relations. Billy Carter did it, Anyone Kardashian-adjacent has tried it. That’s not the issue here. The issue is that Hunter Biden is selling pedestrian artwork for outrageous sums that don’t seem warranted, and the Biden White House has arranged it so that the public has no visibility into who is buying it.
That, coupled with Hunter’s already shady-seeming dealings with Burisma and the Chinese government, create an appearance of impropriety and conflict of interest.
But the exponentially greater amount of actual graft that characterized the Trump Administration is A-OK, right? Emphasis on “right”.
So, at this point in this thread, we’ve had arguments that: if the sales of Hunter Biden’s artwork aren’t blinded, that’s an ethical scandal; if the sales are blinded, that’s an ethical scandal; if the Biden White House doesn’t intervene in the sales arrangements, that’s an ethical scandal; if the Biden White House does intervene in the sales arrangements, that’s an ethical scandal. And none of the posters offering any of these mutually contradictory positions are arguing with with each other.
And frankly, 250 posts after I was YELLED AT for being a “broken record”, at this point, I’ve got to agree. This has been a circular argument since very early in the thread. I’m going to bow out.
It’s turtles ethical scandals all the way down!
The artwork does not merit the price. This is to buy influence with the President or fund a political movement - clearly. The donors names are kept secret to protect them from public scrutiny and so that the rest of us can’t quite put 2 and 2 together.
People who purchase artwork or other goods are not donors. The rest of the post is in a similar vein.
I’m not certain that I disagree, but then I don’t think that Jasper John’s “Flag” was worth $110 million either. That’s why you and I are not art appraisers.
If it’s so clear, I’m assuming you have some evidence of this expected malfeasance. If the anticipated prices are your evidence, was Steven Cohen trying to buy influence of someone in Jasper Johns’ sphere?
If the donor names were public, would the argument be “The donors names are public so that Joe Biden knows to whom he owes favors.”?
Did people who bought Ivankas products expect the same?
I’ll repeat myself…
All this “concern” is propaganda, partisan sniping.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if Ivanka had a history of getting extremely lucrative deals from hostile foreign governments her father was negotiating with, then claimed she recently learned how to design dresses and she auctioned them off for $500,000 each to buyers you weren’t allowed to know about because the Trump administration made sure the buyers would never be known, the same people here saying this is no big deal would have been shouting corruption from the rooftops.
So, hostile foreign governments are gonna buy Hunters art?
I guess he just has to go on welfare… nope, can’t do that either. Become homeless since he is not allowed to earn a living.
He can earn a living. Say, by selling his art to art galleries if thry’ll buy it and the teansactions are public. Or he can sell them to private buyers so long as the teansaction can be scrutinized.
Or, he can go to work as a plain old lawyer like his peers, if he hasn’t been disbarred and he doesn’t take a job with a Chinese or Russian law firm.
What he shouldn’t do is suddenly start selling the ‘art’ that he just learned how to do for half a million a pop to buyers whose identity is hidden from the public by his father’s administration. I mean, he can legally do it I guess, but the American people are free to judge his actiobs and how they relate to the Biden administration. And I don’t think it will help them.
I don’t know, did they? As far as I am aware she had clothing lines long before her dad ran for office. All the celebrity girls have clothing lines. I never heard that the garments were poorly made while being outrageously expensive. But that is how I would describe Biden’s work. His straw blowing is as ridiculous as spin art. (I have to wonder if he ever forgets and snorts the paint)
Biden’s pictures are what elementary school kids do everyday, and yet he is charging Picasso prices. So, who are the fools who would pay $500,000 for a crass piece of garbage - are they really that incredibly clueless about art? Personally, I don’t think so.
Even if someone doesn’t really understand art, they do understand the intrinsic investment value based on the fame and reputation of the artist. Hunter has no background, credentials, body of work or reputation that would guarantee such an investment. will increase in value over time. There is no believable reason for anyone to show or buy his work.
If old Joe painted it, on the other hand - it could rank there with a Bush painting – pretty bad but valuable to sycophants. But Hunter? Nobody likes that bottom feeder enough to even get an autograph.
The whole idea is to hide the transactions for the no one knows who, if anyone, is trying to curry favor. If Joe have no fucking idea you bought one of his sons artworks, you can’t ask for favors.
If the names were public, then people would say the buyers are trying to curry favor.
And here Pinecone has- accidentally or not- made clear the motivations behind this latest rightwing fauxrage. I’m out.
And that’s the dumbest excuse for this I’ve ever heard.
“If your father gives us the rail car contract, we will buy four of your silly paintings for $500,000 each”
Joe gives the rail contract to that vompany, and the next day, an anonymous buyer buys four paintings for $500,000 each. The public will never know who they were, but Hunter Biden sure does.
How could you not see how easy this is to do? The anonymity protects Biden, not the public.
And he knows this how? I mean it’s not like there have been multiple posts explaining that that’s not how this is supposed to work…
The 20th Century art market was driven by social movers-and-shakers like Peggy Guggenheim and predominant New York Gallery owners. They enjoy an inflated but artificial value based more on prestige than on quality. (Read the Painted Word by Tom Wolfe) The long term market for paintings such as the Jasper Johns and Jackson Pollacks and many other paintings of that century will collapse as soon as the contemporaries die and new generations find new leaders to follow. They were fads that consisted of sycophants following the leader. At least that is my educated opinion. Maybe that will be the future of art, I don’t know.
Regardless of that argument, the people who purchased those paintings were certainly known - they are in a registry. The provenance of the work has to be traceable to ensure authenticity - even if in a private collection. The very idea of anonymous purchases defies the very investment value of the art, which in this case is not of a nature that an art expert in the future could identify it as authentic piece of Biden blow-art.
As opposed to, you know, a forgery done in summer camp.
Let me channel my right wing spirit guide . . . execute Hunter for his treasonous acts and impeach Joe… well, just 'cause.