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It’s nearly impossible to buy an original Bob Ross painting (2021)
- ahofmann 1y agoWhile the article is interesting, the lede is buried literally at the very end of the article: > 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.
- wkat4242 1y agoWhat artist does though?
- warmedcookie 1y agoThe painter of light
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoOn 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.
- p1anecrazy 1y agoThank you, I found this very insightful.
- dehrmann 1y agoI'd pay a decent amount of some of his darker paintings.
- egypturnash 1y agoAny 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.
- stevage 1y agoWarhol
- burningChrome 1y agoWhich 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.
- burningChrome 1y agoBanksy? 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.
- qingcharles 1y agoI don't knock Banksy for making a buck here and there. I can't see he even licenses any of his art for merch. He says all his art is free for non-commercial use. I don't think there's any commercial aspect to his work. When I briefly knew some of his graffiti friends in the early 2000s they were struggling like crazy to try and make a quid or two from their art. They were all doing art-for-art's-sake. They were selling their best pieces on eBay for peanuts to pay their bills, or to buy other art they wanted to own. I just regret not buying one of his first pieces when he was selling them for about 100 quid a piece o_O
- jart 1y agoHe doesn't get to decide that. They belong to the people now. Let them have it.
- nkrisc 1y agoSeems like he does, because those who have them are honoring his wishes.
- jart 1y agoIf 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.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoAnd 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.
- jart 1y ago[flagged]
- IncreasePosts 1y agoThen it's just handing them out to people who already are made and not normal people.
- jart 1y ago[flagged]
- nkrisc 1y ago
- paulnpace 1y agoI'm not clear on the use of the word "commodity" here. 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?
- eviks 1y agoUnless you listen to a scholar: > “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.”
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- blueblimp 1y ago> 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.
- margalabargala 1y ago> given that there's demand for them. Yes, just think of the commercial opportunity!
- ahofmann 1y agoI 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.
- arp242 1y agoThey put him in a Mountain Dew ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q51bomzSQ_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q51bomzSQ_s 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.
- FireBeyond 1y agoAnd had threatened legal action towards his son for using his family name as a painter.
- tylrprtr 1y agoCame 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.
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- Bayaz 1y agoThere were plans for a Bob Ross Wii game that sadly never came to fruition. Maybe it can be revisited in AR/VR.
- HPsquared 1y agoVR painting in general sounds cool. I wonder if there's anything you could do with painting 3D shapes.
- Philpax 1y agoYes: https://openbrush.app/ https://openbrush.app/
- jrm4 1y agoHaving played with VR painting? I'm genuinely shocked that it's not a killer app for VR. Feels like it should be BIGGER than it is.
- ToucanLoucan 1y agoMaybe 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?
- paulnpace 1y agoWhen the licensing expo was in town here in Las Vegas, two separate attendees told me that Bob Ross licensed products fly off the shelf.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoI 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
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y agoIf you want to get sappy, Bob would probably want you to paint your own version of the piece he made that feel like buying.
- Footkerchief 1y agoWhen did clickbait headlines become acceptable here?
- mcphage 1y agoWhat does “clickbait headline” mean to you?
- NaOH 1y ago(2021) Previous discussion when submitted by rmason: It’s nearly impossible to buy an original Bob Ross painting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27014367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27014367 - May 2021 (85 comments)
- CubsFan1060 1y agoFun video about the same topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDs3o1uLEdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDs3o1uLEdU
- paxys 1y agoI 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.
- earlyriser 1y agoYeah, this was what happened when Warhol died, the market was flood with thousands of works.
- lurk2 1y ago> 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. He remained popular after his death. I can remember seeing memes of Bob Ross as early as 2008.
- Modified3019 1y agoGoing back further, from what I saw he had notoriety even back in 2003/2004 on 4chan.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Rendello 1y agoPeep Show was calling him "God" in 2003: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74sDcT7Z3M0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74sDcT7Z3M0
- derektank 1y agoYeah, I grew up watching reruns of his show on PBS in the early 00's. It was much more fun to watch when home sick than Antiques Roadshow.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ourmandave 1y agoThe paintings are nice, but I think his ASMR content is worth way more. 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLEVtOGGC5U
- neilv 1y ago> “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.
- 542354234235 1y ago>some might appreciate having a tangible, more direct link to him 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.
- neilv 1y agoAgreed, I was thinking that, but I could also imagine someone wanting something he made, which is why I said "more".
- Fricken 1y agoFortunately he left behind detailed instructions showing you how to make a Bob Ross original you can call your own
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- EGreg 1y agoIs it a Bob Ross original though? And what if an AI watches it?
- lionkor 1y agoMake it a startup with your own domain so I can block it please
- shadowgovt 1y agoHappy little decade of tutorials.
- gremlinsinc 1y agoor you can have chatGPT make one to your specifications in his style...
- nom 1y agonow you can make videos of him painting it, too
- bahmboo 1y agoThat's funny but of course that was his entire point!
- dijit 1y agoThis feels like it lines up nicely with the core principles of free software.
- backtoyoujim 1y agoI'm fine with that. Bob Ross Must Be Protected At All Costs.
- VirusNewbie 1y agoI'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?
- kazinator 1y agoI would say, it is unassailably impossible. A genuine, authentic Bob Ross painting is not original.
- gorfian_robot 1y agocan I interest you in a Xavier Cugat?
- solomonb 1y agoIn 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.
- tommmlij 1y agoI 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...
- inasio 1y agoThese 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]). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_de_Sensibilit%C3%A9_Picturale_Immat%C3%A9rielle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_de_Sensibilit%C3%A9_Pictu...
- Llamamoe 1y agoWhy.. why would you even think of that..?
- inasio 1y agoI 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)
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y agoI 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.