Comment by paxys

Comment by paxys 2 days ago

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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.

codingdave 2 days ago

> 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.

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  • judge2020 2 days ago

    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).

    http://www.thetvratingsguide.com/2020/02/tvrg-ratings-histor...

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    • ysavir 2 days ago

      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.

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      • mixmastamyk 2 days ago

        Inside the US, never heard of him until later 2000s or so as well. And watched PBS at times.

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    • schwartzworld a day ago

      There was a lot less tv in the 80s. If you didn’t have cable, then you just had a handful of channels. I didn’t watch Joy of Painting, but it was pretty hard not to notice the painting Afro guy when flipping through the extremely limited number of channels most people had access to.

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    • [removed] 2 days ago
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  • JKCalhoun 2 days ago

    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.

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    • tomstockmail 2 days ago

      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.

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    • SoftTalker 2 days ago

      Agree. Few people watch PBS. The readership here is not representative.

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      • Brybry 2 days ago

        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).

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      • nothrabannosir 2 days ago

        Like Sesame Street, Bob Ross was more famous than PBS. I didn’t even know what America was and I knew Bob Ross.

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      • xnyan a day ago

        In the mid 90s when Bob Ross died, 95% of American preschoolers had seen Sesame Street, at the time a show not available anywhere besides PBS.

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tanewishly 2 days ago

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.

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majormajor 2 days ago

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...

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khazhoux 2 days 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.

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

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RobRivera 2 days ago

> 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.

Still urks me.

"CANT OR WONT!?"

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  • smeej 2 days ago

    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!

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  • [removed] 2 days ago
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  • echelon 2 days ago

    "I don't know, can you?"

    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.

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    • nothrabannosir 2 days ago

      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”

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  • makeitdouble 2 days ago

    A way into this: it's not personal choices.

    Milking every dollar out of anything valuable is burned into people's souls, and willfully decreasing the value is not a possibility.

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    • mandmandam 2 days ago

      Try leaving America some time.

      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).

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      • mionhe 2 days ago

        I don't personally know of any, but I'd like to. Do you have some examples to share?

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        • mandmandam 2 days ago

          > I don't personally know of any

          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...

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      • southernplaces7 2 days ago

        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..

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      • GJim 2 days ago

        > 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.

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        • mandmandam 2 days ago

          > 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.

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lurk2 2 days 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.

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  • derektank 2 days ago

    Yeah, 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.

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    • mcphage 2 days ago

      What, The Price Is right not good enough for you?!

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      • JKCalhoun 2 days ago

        When the price of cars became more than four digits (and the first digit was not a "3") I bailed on "Price is Right". Too hard.

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  • mcphage 2 days ago

    Yeah. He’s being rediscovered, but at his death, he’d already spent 20 years being discovered in the first place.

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Nashooo 2 days ago

Genuinely curious to your age, as I'm suspecting some recency bias? As Bob Ross certainly was well known throughout Europe way before the 2010s.

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  • saalweachter 2 days ago

    If you were growing up without cable in the US when he was on the air, PBS was one of like five channels you could watch.

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  • technothrasher 2 days ago

    All us kids in the US knew him growing up in the 80’s, as he was on just before the cartoons on Saturday mornings.

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JohnFen 2 days ago

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.

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earlyriser 2 days ago

Yeah, this was what happened when Warhol died, the market was flood with thousands of works.

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fracus 2 days ago

They are for sure selling them morsel by morsel and milking top value for as long as they can. Any other way and they are losing money.

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brandonmenc 2 days ago

> Bob Ross as we know him only blew up in the 2010s in the internet/YouTube/streaming age.

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

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