{"id":15534,"date":"2023-04-05T19:40:23","date_gmt":"2023-04-06T02:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/?p=15534"},"modified":"2023-04-05T20:27:21","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T03:27:21","slug":"hunter-biden-the-aztecs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/hunter-biden-the-aztecs.html","title":{"rendered":"Hunter Biden & the Aztecs"},"content":{"rendered":"

What new works has the eminent world renown artist Hunter Biden been working on lately? As reported<\/a> by the New York Post, he has just finished \u201can intricately patterned painting of an Aztec god.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to Aztec deities Hunter But didn\u2019t pick just any old god, he went right for \u201cthe big guy.\u201d I instantly recognized the deity in Biden\u2019s inexpert multicolored painting as the Aztec god of war. More on that later.<\/p>\n

First I must inform readers that Hunter will exhibit his latest works at \u201cBridging the Abstract,\u201d an exhibition at the Georges Berg\u00e8s Gallery in Soho, New York that opens April 6, 2023. It\u2019s not known if Hunter\u2019s Aztec painting will be shown.<\/p>\n

In 2015 the \u201cluxury lifestyle magazine\u201d known as Resident did an interview with Berg\u00e8s titled Modern Eye For Modern Art<\/em><\/a>. In that interview the gallery owner heaped praise upon the wonders of Communist China:<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to further my embrace of the rising China and its undisputable growing influence of contemporary art and that is why my focus these days is mostly on China (…)<\/p>\n

I have made the commitment to establish the Georges Berg\u00e8s Gallery foothold in China. My plan is to be the lead guy in China<\/em>; the lead collector and art dealer discovering and nurturing talent from that region. I plan to find and discover and bring to the rest of the world those I consider China\u2019s next generation of modern artists.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In becoming Hunter\u2019s gallerist and promoter, Berg\u00e8s has indeed wholeheartedly championed \u201cthe rising China.\u201d For you see, Hunter has significant connections to the Red Mandarins. The Washington Post reported<\/a> Hunter had dealings with CEFC China Energy\u2014which has direct links to the Chinese Community Party (CCP). Hunter received $4.8 million from the CCP starting in 2017. But there\u2019s nothing to worry about… I\u2019m certain Hunter spent the money on art supplies.<\/p>\n

But back to the \u201cBridging the Abstract\u201d sideshow. Hunter\u2019s art will be shown alongside works created by Abstract Expressionist painters Helen Frankenthaler and Elaine de Kooning. This is embarrassingly shameful.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Left: \u201cUntitled.\u201d Elaine de Kooning. Acrylic on paper. 1965. Right: \u201cMagic Carpet.\u201d Helen Frankenthaler. Oil on canvas. 1964.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

De Kooning (1918-1989) adhered to the splash and splatter style of abstract painting. She was married to Abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning. Frankenthaler (1928-2011) worked as an abstract painter and came to advocate the “color field” school of painting; color field took abstraction to new extremes; it eliminated brushstrokes and any semblance of form in favor of simply staining large areas of canvas with pigment. The idea was to erase content altogether.<\/p>\n

Both women were stalwart veterans of the Post WWII Abstract Expressionist movement, which unseated realism and eventually totally dominated the art world. As a realist artist I wouldn\u2019t give you a penny for a painting from these two, and I have even less interest in the Abstract Expressionist movement as a whole.<\/p>\n

However I will grant to De Kooning and Frankenthaler the title of nemesis<\/em>, and begrudgingly acknowledge their place in art. Whereas Hunter is nothing but a crackhead who wouldn\u2019t even have qualified to clean the paint brushes of the Abstract Expressionists. Harrumph.<\/p>\n

But back to that Aztec god, who or what is the deity Hunter Biden painted?<\/p>\n

The Aztec god of war was named Huitzilopochtli (wee-tsee-loh-pohch-tlee). In Nahuatl, the lingua franca of the Aztecs, the name literally means \u201cHummingbird Left.\u201d<\/p>\n

It might seem an amusing name for the Aztec\u2019s primary deity, but if you have observed male hummingbirds defending their territory you will understand the reason. The tiny but valiant little birds will give chase to ravens and hawks; they are courageous and fearsome\u2014just the attributes you would expect<\/em> from a war god. The Aztecs worshipped all of their gods by way of ritual human sacrifice, but Hummingbird Left required more blood than most.<\/p>\n

The Aztecs kept records of their history, exploits, and religious practices in folding accordion-like books called codices. These were created of \u201cpaper\u201d made from fig bark or deer skin, and while the Aztecs had no formal written language, they developed a pictorial method of communication\u2014glyphs. Today some two dozen codices have survived history. One such book is the Codex Bordonicus.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Hunter Biden\u2019s \u201cAztec god\u201d painting. Image courtesy Georges Berg\u00e8s Gallery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Aztecs wrote the Codex Bordonicus just before, or right after the Spanish arrived in 1519 Mexico. It is composed of 36 folded sheets of paper emblazoned with hundreds of brightly colored glyphs that detail the cycles of their divinatory and solar calendars, religious rituals, and their gods. The codex contains a glyph of an Aztec priest dressed in the guise of Huitzilopochtli; it is the very image that crackhead Biden copied for his stupid painting.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Aztec god of war Huitzilopochtli, as he appears in the Codex Bordonicus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the Codex Bordonicus pictorial, a priest from the war god cult is shown holding the feathered shield of Huitzilopochtli in his right hand, and in his raised left hand he brandishes a lethal weapon that defeats his enemies\u2014it is a supernatural snake of fire named Xiuhc\u00f3atl (Turquoise Serpent). Across from the priest a feathered snake\u2014here a manifestation of Turquoise Serpent, swallows a human sacrificial victim.<\/p>\n

The cult priest is wearing what the Aztecs called \u201cteocuitlaquemitl\u201d (golden clothes). A sacrificial victim\u2019s torso and arms were skinned, and the flayed epidermis created a suit of skin; the hands were left attached to the flayed arms. By pulling on and wearing the skin suit, the cultist was transformed into the war god he worshiped. The golden clothes are plainly seen in the glyph.<\/p>\n

\"\"
An accurate depiction of Aztec human sacrifice by the famed Mexican artist, Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is highly unlikely that a dullard like Hunter Biden is aware of anything I have described above. In all probability, by the looks of his silly artwork, he simply noted the Aztec graphic somewhere and thought it would make a \u201ccool\u201d painting.<\/p>\n

Liberals and leftists usually go to pieces when confronted with examples of people using the cultural identity of others for their own profit. But something tells me there will be no protests regarding Hunter\u2019s \u201ccultural appropriation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last great art critic Robert Hughes (1938-2012) pilloried the contemporary art world in his 2008 documentary, The Mona Lisa Curse<\/em><\/a>. In the film Hughes noted: \u201cApart from drugs, art is the biggest unregulated market in the world, with contemporary art sales estimated at around $18 billion a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no secret the art world has become an environ where elites indulge in money laundering. For heaven\u2019s sake, even CNN wrote a 2020 article titled \u201cThe art world has a money laundering problem<\/em><\/a>.\u201d Naturally it focused on two Russian oligarchs who \u201callegedly seized on the secrecy of the art industry to evade sanctions.\u201d In 2021 the New York Times published As Money Launderers Buy Dal\u00eds, U.S. Looks at Lifting the Veil on Art Sales<\/em><\/a>, a weak article that mentioned Russians and drug dealers, but little else.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt CNN and the New York Times won\u2019t be… excuse me, \u201csniffing\u201d around the Bidens when it comes to art and money laundering. But that\u2019s not really surprising. It\u2019s also not shocking that Hunter Biden\u2019s mediocre Aztec war god painting is being displayed in an art exhibition.<\/p>\n

Art as sacrificial victim. Oh those golden clothes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What new works has the eminent world renown artist Hunter Biden been working on lately? As reported by the New York Post, he has just finished \u201can intricately patterned painting of an Aztec god.\u201d When it comes to Aztec deities Hunter But didn\u2019t pick just any old god, he went right for \u201cthe big guy.\u201d I instantly recognized the deity…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15535,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-art","category-general"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art-for-a-change.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}