Classic gold - from CNN:
Is Hunter Biden's art any good?
Hunter Biden has been many things over his 51 years. But, in the last few years at least, he has been an artist.
"For years I wouldn't call myself an artist," he told The New York Times, from his Los Angeles home and studio, last year. "Now I feel comfortable saying it."
Boy howdy. Some more:
So I reached out to Sebastian Smee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for The Washington Post, to get his evaluation of Hunter Biden, artist.
And the interview:
Cillizza: Let's start simple: Is Hunter Biden's work any good, aesthetically speaking?
Smee: For me, not really.
I've only seen it in reproduction, so I'm sure I'm missing a lot: texture, layering, detail. Parts of them look technically impressive. But the style is eclectic in a way that makes his work feel neither one thing nor another.
Most great artists, whatever style of art they make, have been trying to make art all their lives. They are fully devoted to what they do. To me, Biden seems a bit of a dabbler.
His work has the feeling of an afterthought. It doesn't feel like it needed to be made, except perhaps as a therapeutic exercise. I have no trouble with that. It's as good a reason to make art as any. But if I were a museum curator, I would struggle to find compelling reasons to share it with the public.
And this:
Cillizza: The New York Times last year described Biden's paintings as "leaning toward the surreal." Is that how you would describe them? Why or why not?
Smee: People sometimes say "surreal" when they mean random.
From what I've seen, Biden's work is less surreal than decorative. Decorative is OK: Matisse was decorative. But Matisse was not random. You can feel the internal logic in every work he made, and from work to work throughout his career. In Biden's case, I'm not feeling that at all.
And this:
Cillizza: Finish this sentence: Hunter Biden's work resembles the work of ____________." Now, explain.
Smee: "... a cafe painter."
By which I mean, you see a certain kind of art in coffee shops, and some of it is OK and a lot of it is bad, and sometimes it's surprisingly good. But you wouldn't, unless you were related to the artist, spend more than $1,000 on it.
Heh - it is not art, it is paying for access. Nothing less, nothing more.
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