I don't know why the article and everyone here is coming away with the conclusion that Bob Ross didn't want his art to be sold.
A simpler reasoning is that there wasn't any demand for his paintings while he was alive. His show ran from 1983-1994 and he died in 1995. He was reasonably popular at that time, sure, but Bob Ross as we know him only blew up in the 2010s in the internet/YouTube/streaming age.
Now there is a trove of 1,165 paintings which are no doubt valuable, but cannot all be sold because they would flood the market and decrease their own value. So Bob Ross, Inc. is cleverly keeping them under lock and key and letting the scarcity drive prices up.
> Bob Ross as we know him only blew up in the 2010s in the internet/YouTube/streaming age.
No, he was just as well-known when his show was on the air. He was a household name, his paintings and style was known, and people talked about him enough to have opinions on whether he was an "artist" or just a TV show host.
I was going to call this anecdotal evidence based on it never appearing in the top 100 (or so) Nielson rated TV shows for a year, based on the lists for 1984-1995 here[0].
However, it looks like PBS never signed up for Nielson until 2009, so we have limited/no public data on viewership of The Joy of Painting (or Sesame Street, etc for that matter).
There's a lot of TV shows out there, even in the 80s and 90s, and plenty of ways for celebrities to have their image and reputation bolstered. Ratings aren't reliable in trying to measure someone's notoriety.
Growing up in the late 80s/90s, and mostly outside of the US, I can't remember a time when I didn't know who Bob Ross was.
Did you grow up wealthy in the 80s? Most people didn’t have cable television back then, it was comparatively expensive and not available outside major metropolitan areas. Most people only had a half dozen TV channels or so, and sometimes Bob Ross was the only thing on TV worth watching. Everyone knew who he was.
We were not rich but had basic cable since 1979 or so. Maybe California was ahead on that front. My memory is that it only cost perhaps $10 a month in the 80s.
My experience was that accidentally tuning into Joy of Painting for about 45 seconds was enough to completely hook me (although I was not fully aware of this at the time).
My sense is that he was known to frequent PBS viewers (I remember him from before 2010) — but the whole Chia-fro thing and "happy clouds" or whatever meme-like thing that comes to mind definitely took him to the mainstream crowd with the internet.
I present the evidence of Family Guy episode _Fifteen Minutes of Shame_ airdate April 25, 2000 which had a Bob Ross bit. Bob Ross was part of the cultural zeitgeist long before the 2010s Internet memes. That has brought a new generation to him, but that's just bringing GenZ in line with the others.
I think a lot of people who were or had kids pre-internet streaming probably watched PBS, at least sometimes.
Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow, Joy of Painting, Arthur, Bill Nye, Barney, Teletubbies, etc.
It's not like there were a lot of TV choices for kids if their parents couldn't afford cable (and some stations like Cartoon Network didn't even exist until 1992+, I think even Disney Channel was a premium channel like HBO).
Bob Ross was known in my country (in Europe) due to his show at the time. Not quite universally, but probably closer to a household name than any other living painter was at the time. Dunno how it was in other countries in Europe, but still. The man was relatively well known for paintings, paintings that were regarded well by the general audience (experts: dunno).
So while maybe he couldn't be selling his paintings for 1000s to the decently-off, there clearly was ample demand. If he truly wanted to make a boatload, he easily could have.
Related: the treasure trove could easily be sold 1 painting at a time. Just don't make it regular - not once a year, but sometimes 2 in 2 months, and then 5 years nothing. That really wouldn't spurs the value that much, if at all.
I think a lot of the responses to this are ignoring the things that were popular in the 90s that don't see a big spike of demand more recently.
Bob Ross was popular. Thomas Kinkade was popular. IMO it's doubtful Ross would've been as popular at retail in the 90s as Kinkade. One was a nice cute little educational show. One was "the painter of light" with a marketing engine around him. Both also had plenty of detractors from the "serious" art scene.
Why did Ross get positive associations through 2000s internet culture that Kinkade never did?
Which would you rather go buy now?
Was it just nostalgia, since he was relevant much more to the lives of the kids that grew up to create a lot of the internet culture of the time? Probably a big chunk of it.
But there's also just a certain right-place-right-time. Like, nobody seems to be going nuts about re-buying their childhood Pogs or even Beanie Babies. Ok, those were readily available at retail; Bob Ross wasn't. But Pokemon cards were too...
> cannot all be sold because they would flood the market and decrease their own value. So Bob Ross, Inc. is cleverly keeping them under lock and key and letting the scarcity drive prices up.
Personal pet-peeve.
And yes, I know it doesn't really matter to most people.
I guess you're the first person I've seen use it, so it can't rise to the level of pet peeve for me, but using "urks" instead of "irks" made me cringe on about as visceral a level!
People that say that sometimes irk me with their pedantry. You don't hear it so much anymore, though, as all the people who once cared are elderly or gone.
Language is mutable. I think the best thing you could do is let it go. Perhaps even ascribe a stronger meaning to this "incorrect" usage: it theoretically could be, but it won't be, because it can't be given the circumstances.
Sometimes people hide behind this detail in order to absolve themselves of responsibility, though. That’s not as benign as a mere shift in language. OP may have been pointing out responsibility rather than nitpicking language.
“We cannot pay you more, or we won’t be able to hit the margins the market expects from us this year.”
“We can’t license this sports event for wider audiences”
“We can’t sell all of Bob Ross’s paintings or their value would go down”
I promise you, there are countries out there where that type of person is widely looked down on (usually the countries that had to fight off colonizers).
Really? Just America? I know of no country, having lived in more than a couple of them, where people don't do what they can to make money or increase the value of what they have for personal economic benefit.
Americans are no less or more human than anyone else, and this idiotic posturing about some inherent difference that makes one group of people or country somehow stupider, more wicked or more avaricious than others is a bad habit no matter what direction it flows in or who its pointed at..
> where people don't do what they can to make money or increase the value of what they have for personal economic benefit.
That wasn't the argument. You've moved the goalposts to a different stadium.
What was claimed was that "milking every dollar out of anything valuable is burned into people's souls", and somehow, from that, you heard "people do what they can to make money for personal economic benefit". Curious.
> Americans are no less or more human than anyone else
No one said Americans aren't human, or less human.
> this idiotic posturing about some inherent difference
No one said it was inherent. In fact I said the opposite; that people are generally egalitarian unless warped.
> that makes one group of people or country somehow stupider, more wicked or more avaricious than others is a bad habit
Nope. Countries have different characters, and it's okay to talk about it. Also, some countries - cough - have extremely powerful and capable groups that have been working for decades to warp the national character; say, by instilling rampant Islamophobia, or working to undermine critical thinking and general education.
I hope you ask yourself how you got this much wrong on a reading of a rather simple comment. Something clearly hit a nerve.
Like I said, just look at countries which resisted colonization.
For example - one of the fundamental mechanics of colonization is to find people willing to sell out their countrymen for personal profit. While there are always a few people like this, it's far from the norm; and those people are remembered with searing hostility.
A specific example that comes to mind: British land-owners exacting high rents on Irish farmers would often seize their property and hold a local auction. The entire town would turn out, the original farmer would make a small token bid to buy back their farm, and no one would bid against them.
Ireland also invented boycotts, where the entire village would shun scummy landlords.
Egalitarianism isn't just a reaction to colonizers though - it's the default state of humanity [0].
And research shoes that placing material possessions at the centre of your life is inversely correlated to your emotional well-being [1]. Pretty hard to believe that this would be the default.
So, American culture is clearly twisted. It might not be the most perverse in the world... But it's up there. This is a fact well recognized in the world, and almost entirely ignored in America itself.
Yes, on an individual basis, Americans can be quite lovely. Friendly and well meaning, might go out of their way to help you, and so on. Sure. But the fact that Americans can really believe that humanity, at its core, is willing to sell out their neighbors for profit says everything about Americans and nothing about humanity.
> usually the countries that had to fight off colonizers
Good Lord!
France and Blighty (to pick two examples) did their fair share of empire building, however I can assure you, they do not worship at the alter of capitalism in quite the way which is endemic to the USA.
> they do not worship at the alter of capitalism in quite the way which is endemic to the USA.
What were they like at the height of their empires? During their respective long slow declines? Did their people worship the worst of their colonists as national heroes? ...
And while they are not quite as Molochian as Americans today (no one said they are, in fact the argument was that America is rather exceptional) they certainly aren't as anti-capitalist as many others. Particularly when you look at the manner in which they pursue global economic interests.
The reason people think that Bob Ross didn't want the paintings he did for the show to be sold is because he said so. He considered them demos, not finished paintings, and you don't sell demos.
He was also famous and popular before the internet discovered him. The internet certainly boosted his visibility, though.
> He was reasonably popular at that time, sure, but Bob Ross as we know him only blew up in the 2010s in the internet/YouTube/streaming age.
No, he was well-known already in early 90s (at least on my college campus), and his sayings were pre-internet memes. He was perfect match for slacker stoner culture
> “He was always happy to donate his paintings to fundraisers, or sell his work at a reasonable price,” she says. “Many people who own one acquired it decades ago.”
Any artist who wants to be able to pay their bills without doing anything besides "making art".
If you can convince giant bags of money pretending to be people that one of your paintings is worth several years worth of the median wage, it's no more a less a commodity than if you're selling hundreds of thousands of prints of the same image for $5 apiece.
On that point, I saw a pretty great documentary about Thomas Kinkade called "Art for Everybody" a year or so ago at a film festival. Was pretty fascinating. I won't give away too much but was really interesting to go into the man (and his other artwork) behind the facade.
Until it becomes apparent the people he loathes the most are the ones willing to pay him ungodly amounts of money for his "art"; so he relents and sells it to them anyways.
Which is fascinating to think he wanted to mass produce art and then after he died, the same thing happened; all of his stuff that was still around ended up creating a scarcity and driving up the price of his stuff anyways.
If they were smart, what they would do is sell them directly to consumers who will cherish them and give the paintings good homes. Then make the buyers sign a contract of some sort that they can't be resold for X number of years. That way the paintings bring joy and value to others, while respecting Bob's wishes of not being a commodity.
And then they would be involved in lawsuits with normal people who didn't honor the contract. Legally okay, but would be a bad look for the foundation.
there's a documentary about this, and the people who own the rights screwed over Bob and are purely there to exploit him. they have nothing to do with his family.
I think that "I don't want people to just buy my art" is consistent with the persona of Bob Ross, at least presented on TV. Maybe he was a different person in private, I don't know.
But Bob Ross the personality trying to teach people The Joy of Painting? I think he would rather people paint their own than buy the ones he painted
> Today, 1,165 Bob Ross originals — a trove worth millions of dollars — sit in cardboard boxes inside the company’s nondescript office building in Herndon, Virginia.
This seems like a bit of a waste given that there's demand for them.
The scarcity makes the demand. I doubt there are that much people wanting low/average quality paintings, even if it has the signature of a person as famous as him. But the 3 of them are willing to spend a lot of money on it. If anyone could buy an original batmobile, people would grow tired of seeing them in the street and they would lose their appeal really quickly.
Most fans of Bob Ross would probably have painted something similar. What he teached was that the enjoyment came from the process and that anyone could paint similar low/average uninspired stuff.
I don’t care about art very much and I would be pay a thousand or two for one. I know that’s much but given that I’ve never bought a painting before and I don’t think I’m particularly unique, I believe this signals there is pretty large demand.
I paint myself occasionally some similarly uninspired stuff, and bar 2 painting I hung in the living room and corridor, I throw them away (or rather reuse the canvas) because I don't even consider them art but rather artisanal decorative items.
2 thousand can get you much more interesting paintings. There are many talented but barely known artists anywhere in the world waiting for you. You just have to visit galleries whenever you are visiting a town.
I found a friend's painting in the free pile at an opshop. Told them about it and they thought it was a hilarious - they'd sold it for $65.
I have the painting to another friend as inspiration about the value of art - they love it.
Too many people suggest to artists that they should monetise their work, which is kinda sad I think.
It is good to make art because you want to (assuming one can afford to), not because you want money or $status. If you want to chase money then that's fine too, but understand the negatives that come with that choice.
The thing with art is that there's always more of it getting created by people who either do it as a hobby or will accept low prices out of desperation to "follow their dreams," they're competing with all the existing art out there, and while some gets lost to natural disasters and neglect, the better stuff sticks around.
No, because he painted something that I find pleasant to look at and consider it worth money. The price is higher because of the artist's fame, that much is true - but that is always the case with art.
I mean, you're basically arguing about taste... Bob Ross was a lot more famous than most other artists, not in the least because many people liked what he produced.
He was more famous because he appeared on TV, and transfered/the joy of painting, not because of his paintings. They were unremarkable to say the least.
A lot of people are trying to make a living painting landscapes with the same painting for dummies style that Ross used (not invented). It seems counterproductive to give money to speculators for an unremarkable painting of a dead man when you can spend a fraction of that to buy a similar decorative painting and contribute to the income of someone who actually worked and spent time on it.
Perhaps, but unless one of them is Walt Disney, I've never heard of them - therefore their fame does not impact my valuation of their work. I can see myself spend 50 bucks on a (to me) unknown piece of art because it is pretty. Spending more would require an additional connection - fame of artist, depicts something dear to me, seems like a good investment, etc. etc... only being pretty isn't enough.
> that anyone could paint similar low/average uninspired stuff.
I hated this sentence. What is wrong with art that is actually, you know, pretty to look at. Obviously Bob Ross paintings aren't very complicated, as they're designed for amateurs to be able to follow along in the instructions. But I find many of his paintings quite beautiful, and if anything the joy in seeing how simple brush strokes can create such beautiful paintings.
Tracey Emin's "My Bed" "sculpture" sold for two and a half million pounds. So people pretending there is some high objective or moral difference between "high art" and "low/average uninspired stuff" are, frankly, full of themselves IMO.
Curious how they give that information away like this. Therefore I suspect it is bogus, or at least phrased in that manner just to make it sound more quaint.
"Oh heres several millons worth of paintings sitting in cardboard boxes in our Bob Ross Inc. nondescript office building in Herndon, Virignia -- please dont break in and steal anything!"
There's wanting to own one as property, and then there's wanting to own a souvenir of an experience. Like a patch, or a t-shirt, or a trophy.
Maybe they should do some Bob Ross events and give the paintings away either as a prize or do a charity raffle. Shit make a foundation to get art supplies to underprivileged kids and use the sales to establish a trust for the foundation.
I wondered also, but then I've read to the end of the article. The article seems to be a bit disingenuous, because the real, real reason seems to be, that the Bob Ross Inc. respects the wish of Bob Ross to not make his paintings a commodity.
Came here to make sure this point was made. Bob Ross Inc's only mission is to make money off a dead man and to ensure his family doesn't receive any of the proceeds.
If he didn't want them sold, he should have destroyed them. Because even if his current heirs decide to keep them locked up, eventually someone is going to come to the realization that they don't need to work anymore if they sell a few of them, and why would you spend your life working for someone else when you could just get rid of something that only takes up space to begin with?
> “He was about as uninterested in the actual paintings as you could possibly be,” says Kowalski. “For him, it was the journey — he wanted to teach people. The paintings were just a means to do that.”
That could be true. Though, someone is sitting atop a treasure trove, the value of which is pinned to the legend being promoted by this article.
For Bob Ross, I wonder whether he might've been too humble to consider that his shows touched many people, such that -- besides whatever personal creative journey he encouraged them on -- some might appreciate having a tangible, more direct link to him, of one of his own paintings.
I'm very surprised there's not a Bob Ross painting app. One which would have presets for every color, brush, and blade from the show. People could fire up the app and use their Apple Pencil or stylus to follow along.
I did that once on a boring Saturday. Used Procreate and a Pencil to follow along with a couple of shows. Had to pause it more than once to find & download a matching brush in Procreate. Was quite fun. I think a dedicated app would sell extremely well.
I think it would be very difficult—he does a lot with color mixing, and having multiple colors on a brush, that software painting solutions don’t support. And all of the color blending on the canvas that his wet-on-wet technique is based around…
Maybe this is the wrong site for this viewpoint, but I don't see what in the world the best damn AR/VR painting game in the world has over actually painting.
Like an expensive canvas is what, $20? And paint can be had for like $5-10 a tube, and unless you just slather the shit on your paintings, you can go quite a long ways on a tube.
Like I play Call of Duty because I don't actually want to experience a warzone. Who wouldn't want to actually paint?
> Like an expensive canvas is what, $20? And paint can be had for like $5-10 a tube
I think you're oversimplifying how much of a hassle painting can be. Sure, one canvas and one tube of paint cost you $25, but you also need to include brushes (duh), an empty jar for water, a palette or an old plate, an easel or a table where paint spills are not a problem, plus the time to set it all up, clean your brushes afterwards, and tear it down (unless you have an empty garage, which people in apartments typically don't). And then there are the lessons which, if you're a beginner, mean several one-hour chunks (and several canvases) until you feel even mildly comfortable on your own.
I think VR painting is to painting what Guitar Hero is to playing a guitar - you may not be a "real" painter afterwards, but as long as it's fun...
In the contemporary art market the stated prices are actually really low. Painters fresh out of art school at a good gallery focused on emerging artists will sell paintings for 10-20k these days.
These paintings sound almost perfect for an NFT art project (burn it and turn it into digital tokens), given that the quality of the art pieces is not super high, but there's huge cultural resonance. To be fair the idea is much older (Yves Klein, the Klein blue guy, Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle [0]).
I regret making that comment, even if right now the NFT craze appears over I'll have nightmares if it comes back and someone starts burning Bob Ross paintings (or anything else really)
I think NFTs have no credibility in the eyes of the public. Something akin to NFTs tracking real world ownership of physical things could work, but we already have that in the form of registries and deeds. Provenance is a solved problem, from a technical and social perspective.
The idea of “owning” a purely digital asset that anyone else can just make copies of (but not “own” according to some blockchain) just seems silly.
I just force my brain to think that he was such a good teacher that every TV student is so good that all produced art indistinguishable from his. That thought brings me joy and not the actual copyright blabla...
I'm not sure I buy the premise that they're sitting around because selling them all would make them a commodity. They could auction one off every couple months. They could pick a handful to sell every year. Why hoard them?
A simpler reasoning is that there wasn't any demand for his paintings while he was alive. His show ran from 1983-1994 and he died in 1995. He was reasonably popular at that time, sure, but Bob Ross as we know him only blew up in the 2010s in the internet/YouTube/streaming age.
Now there is a trove of 1,165 paintings which are no doubt valuable, but cannot all be sold because they would flood the market and decrease their own value. So Bob Ross, Inc. is cleverly keeping them under lock and key and letting the scarcity drive prices up.
No, he was just as well-known when his show was on the air. He was a household name, his paintings and style was known, and people talked about him enough to have opinions on whether he was an "artist" or just a TV show host.
However, it looks like PBS never signed up for Nielson until 2009, so we have limited/no public data on viewership of The Joy of Painting (or Sesame Street, etc for that matter).
http://www.thetvratingsguide.com/2020/02/tvrg-ratings-histor...
Growing up in the late 80s/90s, and mostly outside of the US, I can't remember a time when I didn't know who Bob Ross was.
Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow, Joy of Painting, Arthur, Bill Nye, Barney, Teletubbies, etc.
It's not like there were a lot of TV choices for kids if their parents couldn't afford cable (and some stations like Cartoon Network didn't even exist until 1992+, I think even Disney Channel was a premium channel like HBO).
So while maybe he couldn't be selling his paintings for 1000s to the decently-off, there clearly was ample demand. If he truly wanted to make a boatload, he easily could have.
Related: the treasure trove could easily be sold 1 painting at a time. Just don't make it regular - not once a year, but sometimes 2 in 2 months, and then 5 years nothing. That really wouldn't spurs the value that much, if at all.
Bob Ross was popular. Thomas Kinkade was popular. IMO it's doubtful Ross would've been as popular at retail in the 90s as Kinkade. One was a nice cute little educational show. One was "the painter of light" with a marketing engine around him. Both also had plenty of detractors from the "serious" art scene.
Why did Ross get positive associations through 2000s internet culture that Kinkade never did?
Which would you rather go buy now?
Was it just nostalgia, since he was relevant much more to the lives of the kids that grew up to create a lot of the internet culture of the time? Probably a big chunk of it.
But there's also just a certain right-place-right-time. Like, nobody seems to be going nuts about re-buying their childhood Pogs or even Beanie Babies. Ok, those were readily available at retail; Bob Ross wasn't. But Pokemon cards were too...
Personal pet-peeve.
And yes, I know it doesn't really matter to most people.
Still urks me.
"CANT OR WONT!?"
People that say that sometimes irk me with their pedantry. You don't hear it so much anymore, though, as all the people who once cared are elderly or gone.
Language is mutable. I think the best thing you could do is let it go. Perhaps even ascribe a stronger meaning to this "incorrect" usage: it theoretically could be, but it won't be, because it can't be given the circumstances.
Literally.
“We cannot pay you more, or we won’t be able to hit the margins the market expects from us this year.”
“We can’t license this sports event for wider audiences”
“We can’t sell all of Bob Ross’s paintings or their value would go down”
Milking every dollar out of anything valuable is burned into people's souls, and willfully decreasing the value is not a possibility.
I promise you, there are countries out there where that type of person is widely looked down on (usually the countries that had to fight off colonizers).
Americans are no less or more human than anyone else, and this idiotic posturing about some inherent difference that makes one group of people or country somehow stupider, more wicked or more avaricious than others is a bad habit no matter what direction it flows in or who its pointed at..
That wasn't the argument. You've moved the goalposts to a different stadium.
What was claimed was that "milking every dollar out of anything valuable is burned into people's souls", and somehow, from that, you heard "people do what they can to make money for personal economic benefit". Curious.
> Americans are no less or more human than anyone else
No one said Americans aren't human, or less human.
> this idiotic posturing about some inherent difference
No one said it was inherent. In fact I said the opposite; that people are generally egalitarian unless warped.
> that makes one group of people or country somehow stupider, more wicked or more avaricious than others is a bad habit
Nope. Countries have different characters, and it's okay to talk about it. Also, some countries - cough - have extremely powerful and capable groups that have been working for decades to warp the national character; say, by instilling rampant Islamophobia, or working to undermine critical thinking and general education.
I hope you ask yourself how you got this much wrong on a reading of a rather simple comment. Something clearly hit a nerve.
Like I said, just look at countries which resisted colonization.
For example - one of the fundamental mechanics of colonization is to find people willing to sell out their countrymen for personal profit. While there are always a few people like this, it's far from the norm; and those people are remembered with searing hostility.
A specific example that comes to mind: British land-owners exacting high rents on Irish farmers would often seize their property and hold a local auction. The entire town would turn out, the original farmer would make a small token bid to buy back their farm, and no one would bid against them.
Ireland also invented boycotts, where the entire village would shun scummy landlords.
Egalitarianism isn't just a reaction to colonizers though - it's the default state of humanity [0].
And research shoes that placing material possessions at the centre of your life is inversely correlated to your emotional well-being [1]. Pretty hard to believe that this would be the default.
So, American culture is clearly twisted. It might not be the most perverse in the world... But it's up there. This is a fact well recognized in the world, and almost entirely ignored in America itself.
Yes, on an individual basis, Americans can be quite lovely. Friendly and well meaning, might go out of their way to help you, and so on. Sure. But the fact that Americans can really believe that humanity, at its core, is willing to sell out their neighbors for profit says everything about Americans and nothing about humanity.
0 - https://medium.com/inside-of-elle-beau/yes-our-ancient-ances...
1 - https://time.com/22257/heres-proof-buying-more-stuff-actuall...
Good Lord!
France and Blighty (to pick two examples) did their fair share of empire building, however I can assure you, they do not worship at the alter of capitalism in quite the way which is endemic to the USA.
What were they like at the height of their empires? During their respective long slow declines? Did their people worship the worst of their colonists as national heroes? ...
And while they are not quite as Molochian as Americans today (no one said they are, in fact the argument was that America is rather exceptional) they certainly aren't as anti-capitalist as many others. Particularly when you look at the manner in which they pursue global economic interests.
He remained popular after his death. I can remember seeing memes of Bob Ross as early as 2008.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74sDcT7Z3M0
https://negosh.com/brand/54d96e91-3646-49bd-9226-53265743157...
He was also famous and popular before the internet discovered him. The internet certainly boosted his visibility, though.
No, he was well-known already in early 90s (at least on my college campus), and his sayings were pre-internet memes. He was perfect match for slacker stoner culture
Uh, what?
Bob Ross was very popular in the early 90s while he was still alive.
So much so that he even did a promo for MTV.
https://youtu.be/PuGaV-BvPlE
> Ultimately, the real reason there aren’t more Bob Ross paintings up for sale is that the artist never wanted them to be a commodity.
> “He was always happy to donate his paintings to fundraisers, or sell his work at a reasonable price,” she says. “Many people who own one acquired it decades ago.”
If you can convince giant bags of money pretending to be people that one of your paintings is worth several years worth of the median wage, it's no more a less a commodity than if you're selling hundreds of thousands of prints of the same image for $5 apiece.
Until it becomes apparent the people he loathes the most are the ones willing to pay him ungodly amounts of money for his "art"; so he relents and sells it to them anyways.
I think if the artist doesn't want the work to be highly commercialized, then maybe the better way would be to have no copyright on their works?
I don’t think it really matters either way though.
Slimy people.
But Bob Ross the personality trying to teach people The Joy of Painting? I think he would rather people paint their own than buy the ones he painted
And what if an AI watches it?
This seems like a bit of a waste given that there's demand for them.
Most fans of Bob Ross would probably have painted something similar. What he teached was that the enjoyment came from the process and that anyone could paint similar low/average uninspired stuff.
I paint myself occasionally some similarly uninspired stuff, and bar 2 painting I hung in the living room and corridor, I throw them away (or rather reuse the canvas) because I don't even consider them art but rather artisanal decorative items.
2 thousand can get you much more interesting paintings. There are many talented but barely known artists anywhere in the world waiting for you. You just have to visit galleries whenever you are visiting a town.
I have the painting to another friend as inspiration about the value of art - they love it.
Too many people suggest to artists that they should monetise their work, which is kinda sad I think.
It is good to make art because you want to (assuming one can afford to), not because you want money or $status. If you want to chase money then that's fine too, but understand the negatives that come with that choice.
I mean, you're basically arguing about taste... Bob Ross was a lot more famous than most other artists, not in the least because many people liked what he produced.
A lot of people are trying to make a living painting landscapes with the same painting for dummies style that Ross used (not invented). It seems counterproductive to give money to speculators for an unremarkable painting of a dead man when you can spend a fraction of that to buy a similar decorative painting and contribute to the income of someone who actually worked and spent time on it.
Canvas or paper will be a few dollars to maybe 10
Paints maybe another 10 per painting by the end.
Then maybe a professionals time for like 100/hr. Idk if you can even hire a plumber that cheap.
A 2 hour painting should cost maybe 400 by an unknown but professional.
Rolex makes 1,000,000 new watches per year, and the wait lists are years-long.
There is definitely enough demand for all of those paintings to be sold for more than you'd think
I hated this sentence. What is wrong with art that is actually, you know, pretty to look at. Obviously Bob Ross paintings aren't very complicated, as they're designed for amateurs to be able to follow along in the instructions. But I find many of his paintings quite beautiful, and if anything the joy in seeing how simple brush strokes can create such beautiful paintings.
Tracey Emin's "My Bed" "sculpture" sold for two and a half million pounds. So people pretending there is some high objective or moral difference between "high art" and "low/average uninspired stuff" are, frankly, full of themselves IMO.
Consensus is that anything that makes you feel is art, and his paintings make people feel, t doesn’t matter the reasons why.
"Oh heres several millons worth of paintings sitting in cardboard boxes in our Bob Ross Inc. nondescript office building in Herndon, Virignia -- please dont break in and steal anything!"
Maybe they should do some Bob Ross events and give the paintings away either as a prize or do a charity raffle. Shit make a foundation to get art supplies to underprivileged kids and use the sales to establish a trust for the foundation.
Yes, just think of the commercial opportunity!
The Kowalskis sued to exclude Bob Ross from the company bearing his name in the final days of his life, when he was struggling with cancer.
So let me carefully suggest that Bob Ross Inc. is not as benevolently looking out to preserve the heritage and legacy of Bob Ross as you might think.
Previous discussion when submitted by rmason:
It’s nearly impossible to buy an original Bob Ross painting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27014367 - May 2021 (85 comments)
That could be true. Though, someone is sitting atop a treasure trove, the value of which is pinned to the legend being promoted by this article.
For Bob Ross, I wonder whether he might've been too humble to consider that his shows touched many people, such that -- besides whatever personal creative journey he encouraged them on -- some might appreciate having a tangible, more direct link to him, of one of his own paintings.
Painting your own painting while watching his show and letting him guide you through, would be a pretty tangible, personal, and direct link to him.
I did that once on a boring Saturday. Used Procreate and a Pencil to follow along with a couple of shows. Had to pause it more than once to find & download a matching brush in Procreate. Was quite fun. I think a dedicated app would sell extremely well.
Like an expensive canvas is what, $20? And paint can be had for like $5-10 a tube, and unless you just slather the shit on your paintings, you can go quite a long ways on a tube.
Like I play Call of Duty because I don't actually want to experience a warzone. Who wouldn't want to actually paint?
I think you're oversimplifying how much of a hassle painting can be. Sure, one canvas and one tube of paint cost you $25, but you also need to include brushes (duh), an empty jar for water, a palette or an old plate, an easel or a table where paint spills are not a problem, plus the time to set it all up, clean your brushes afterwards, and tear it down (unless you have an empty garage, which people in apartments typically don't). And then there are the lessons which, if you're a beginner, mean several one-hour chunks (and several canvases) until you feel even mildly comfortable on your own.
I think VR painting is to painting what Guitar Hero is to playing a guitar - you may not be a "real" painter afterwards, but as long as it's fun...
Yeah, you can get by with very simple tools and materials, but a digital version doesn't limit you to only the simple things.
No cleanup.
No need for figuring out what to do with the canvases.
Any color of paint you want, possibly including ones like "polka dots" or "tiled faces of Nic Cage" or "color-cycling rainbow".
And your brush strokes can be 3d contours of virtual paint hanging in the air instead of marks on a flat canvas.
Fond memories of zoning out on the couch watching Bob beat the devil out of a 3" brush.
His only nearest competitor was Mother Angelica's Religious Catalog on EWTN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLEVtOGGC5U
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_de_Sensibilit%C3%A9_Pictu...
The idea of “owning” a purely digital asset that anyone else can just make copies of (but not “own” according to some blockchain) just seems silly.
A genuine, authentic Bob Ross painting is not original.