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Hunter Biden is no Picasso — but he’s “actually a real artist” whose Big Apple gallery pieces are worth $70,000 to $90,000 each, an expert told The Post.
As the president’s son makes his lukewarm gallery debut in Soho, art critic James Gardner looked at several of Biden’s for-sale oil paintings, and said his biggest criticism is that they’re “too polished, and too eager to please.”
Gardner said Biden’s “new agey” work — including an abstract painting of a man in the mountains and a surreal image of a snake hanging from a tree — is art show-worthy despite sometimes bordering on superficial “eye candy.”
“He knows what he’s doing. In some cases, it’s professional to the point of slickness,” said Gardner, a former Post critic and author of “The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum.”
“This is not Madonna trying to put some stuff on a canvas, he’s a real professional artist,” he said. “It’s good enough to warrant a show even without his name.”
But Gardner acknowledged the pieces — which hang in the Georges Berges Gallery with price tags ranging from $75,000 to $500,000 — will likely go for more than they’re worth because the creator’s dad is President Joe Biden.
“It will invariably get more exposure and sell for more because of who his father is,” he said. “There’s obviously an inflation of the price because he’s the president’s son.”
But ultimately, Gardner said, “He’s actually a real artist, and I like his work.”
These are Gardner’s critiques of three of Biden’s individual paintings — the good, the bad and the boring.
THE GOOD
“St. Thomas,” mixed media on canvas
“It’s interesting in terms of color and composition, and above all, it shows he knows what he’s doing. He’s inventive within abstraction. He manages to find unique ways of composing different geometric abstractions out of many small forms,” Gardner said.
“It’s somewhere between a mosaic and a painting, so that interests me,” he said, adding the art is worth $70,000 to $90,000.
THE BAD
“Untitled,” oil and acrylic
“This one, I don’t care for,” Gardner said. “The conjuring of abstract schematic representation and realism doesn’t work. It looks like he may even be using a photograph,” he said, adding the piece is also worth $70,000 to $90,000. “It’s too polished, and too eager to please.”
THE BORING
“Untitled #1,” mixed media on paper
“For me, the tension between the abstract and realism representation is unsatisfying,” he said. “It seems sort of new agey, and striving for a message…There are other things that impress me more.”
He added, “In terms of its worth, $70,000 to $90,000 doesn’t sound totally off the wall. I wouldn’t pay it, but in terms of what people pay for art — by a good artist who’s not Picasso — that doesn’t sound extravagant for this.”
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