Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Art / News
Hilton Daughter Likes Art! (Bad Art, Which She Doesn't Pay For)
Posted
by Benjamin Sutton
on Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 1:12 PM
Mystery
Hilton family member Hawley Ann Hilton (b. 1949) recently bought some art from kitschy Russian artist
Alexander Presniakov. Or rather, as
Reuters recounts, she acquired some pieces from Presniakov that she was expected to pay $10 million for — how, exactly, the artist's work is worth that much money confuses the hell out of me — but never coughed up the dough and is now being sued by the artist.
Presniakov is a portraitist to the rich and powerful (previous sitters include Ronald Reagan and Princess Diana), though as you'll note from his painting at right (or those on his website), his stuff is tacky as hell. Still, he regularly sells his wares for upwards of $1 million apiece, which makes me wonder what the pieces he made for Hilton were. Portraits of the whole family? The evolution of the Hilton logo? All the company's hotels in Hilton's hometown of Las Vegas? Any personal assistants to the Hilton family feel like giving us the inside scoop?
(via ARTFORUM)
Tags: Hawley Ann Hilton, Hilton Hotels, Alexander Presniakov, people with too much money not paying for the over-expensive art they commission, bad taste