There is another thread about this.
Not wanting to give him too much credit, but they both have lawyers involved and if you saw the photos of the hotel room, it is pretty obvious that it was not just a simple (he hit her) scenario, as the place looked trashed. It is very possible this is all just for publicity as NO CHARGES have been filed and none will be filed.

Not okay to hit a woman and chances are we will never know what happened. Funny though how above Briggs 74 wrote that Retna beat his missus, yet wrote allegedly Cope2 made homophobic comments - think you got those two mixed up in my book.

Artist, athletes, politicians...you name the profession and I'll have a list of moral shortcomings. Enjoy art for what it is...an object!

retna has a bad reputation on here, not just with his personal manner but also being shady with his professional life as well.have a check on his past release threads as there are too many gripes to list.
I personally wouldn't buy from him but thats just my decision and I do realise that everyone has a different moral compass.

You can easily find information that answers your question on this board. It was't the "cash only" policy at the last release alone, it was also the amount of (supposed?) pre selling of items to family and friends and the fact that all of a sudden prints and APs appeared that were offered for a lot of money to folks from this board that weren't successful during the release ... etc ... etc. Reading about it from a (large) distance made it look rather shady ... which is sad as I really like the art Retna is producing.

the fact he drops prints for $800 dollars, sells out instantly but as if by magic you can buy the whole run direct from himself for $2500 a print

sorry mate but he gets not a lot of love on here with deals like that. have a look its not a isolated incident. Anyway.... if you like him and his art, buy it

eastern realm was $600, the biggest gripe was that most of the prints were sold before the release, which many artists do.  One example i can think of off the top of my head is RAE.

10 sets of a/p were also sold for a higher price, which did sell out.  that was a successful release because they sold all the prints, even the higher priced HPM's.  Seems like most people were upset that they didn't get the prints because they wanted them for resale. 

The El Salvador release was botched because it was supposed to be released at MARTE in El Salvador but the museum pre sold the majority of the prints to one individual.  That print was supposed to be for sale in person only and the museum decided to do phone orders after asked not to do so.  That is why the El Salvador print was in person only, because that is how it was supposed to be released in the first place.  They did raise the price and that was probably done to cut out the flippers, which worked based on the secondary prices.

The El Salvador print didn't sell out right away and the remaining prints were purchased by galleries and high end clients and is now sold out.  I am not sure if the HPM's sold out on those but i thought they were a good price, $3000, and better looking HPM's than the Eastern Realm ones.

Aside from these last two print releases Retna hasn't released any lower priced signed prints in years, maybe since un dicho and nino perdido.  So there was a high demand.  The whole point of 13press doing this was to get lower priced prints into the hands of Retna fans which worked but i can't imagine Retna doing it again. 

Obviously the reaction from Retna and 13press to the aftermath of the eastern realm release wasn't ideal, its difficult when everyone is pissed that they didn't get one but what would you do if you had hordes of people upset and talking shit.  I wouldn't even call that shady,  they reacted while angry and frustrated, sure all of us have done so at some point.  Also just so there is no confusion or assumptions i am only talking about the print release and not about the incident.