Comment by ahofmann 2 days ago
While 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.
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.
Banksy?
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 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
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.
He doesn't get to decide that. They belong to the people now. Let them have it.
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.
People who hold them, sued Bob Ross’s son for using “Ross” i.e. his last name.
Slimy people.
Unless 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.”