It’s nearly impossible to buy an original Bob Ross painting | Hacker News Reader

It’s nearly impossible to buy an original Bob Ross painting

thehustle.co

131 pointsrmason83 comments

Awhile ago I tried to train a GAN to let you generate your own ‘original’ Bob Ross paintings. It requiredsome time creating the dataset and lots of tracing, but in the end only worked decently for winter paintings- I’m guessing because of their less complicated compositions and colors palettes.

Random facts: Bob Ross is missing his left index finger and avoids including human evidence in his paintings (eg no chimneys).

GAN: https://twitter.com/jdwlbr/status/1131244682317484032?s=20

Data: https://github.com/jwilber/Bob_Ross_Paintings

Wow that's really cool. Any plans to share the model?

Interesting! Not a critique, but these seem to have a "broadcast tv quality" to them, were the network by any chance trained on the TV show?

They were trained in the paintings data (hence why I collected it!). That quality is from, I believe, the gan having some difficulty figuring out how to color each pixel. But I’m not sure entirely on that, though in the time since I made that, GANs have increased by magnitudes in output quality.

> “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.”

I'm actually impressed that they haven't cashed out on those paintings they hold; wonder how long they'll be able to hold on to cherishing memories before "maximizing profits" displaces them, and crushes any feeling of goodwill the public has towards the custodians of his legacy.

Bob ross namebrand paint and other materials are already kinda overpriced.

The shows are free, they do have to make money somehow

i don't know if sentimentality around not cashing out is an issue. Bob Ross already "stars" in a goddamn Mountain Dew commercial after all.

I don't think Ross consented to that.

I'm sure his estate or Bob Ross Inc or w/e did

This is an advantage of being a small private company; without pressure to beat numbers every quarter they are free to optimize for the best long term outcome.

It's the advantage of being a large private company too.

A publicly traded SpaceX would not be attempting to get to Mars.

I don't know if that's the reason they haven't sold the paintings. I suspect the rights to the Bob Ross brand are worth a lot more than the paintings themselves. All the paintings in their possession probably aren't worth more than a few tens of millions. They probably bring in more revenue than that each year by letting Bob Ross appear in commercials and selling merchandise, and they don't have to deal with the shady world of art dealers to do that.

They're not holding on to cherished memories.

> “The paintings have always just sort of been here,” she says, with a chuckle. “We were sort of behind the times… it never occurred to us that anyone would want them.”

They've got stacks of his paintings piled up on the floor. Nothing in the article indicates that they cherish them or are curating them. I don't have a problem with that, but it's not like they're doing anyone any good where they are.

Bob Ross wanted to make painting approachable and demystify it. He started out selling them himself, sold them or gave them away throughout his career. He knew they weren't high art; that was kinda the point. I think he would want them sold off if having one brought joy to someone. Contrary to crushing feelings of goodwill, I think his fans would be grateful for the opportunity to have one of his paintings for themselves. They're not one-of-a-kind masterpieces that belong in a museum; they're paintings for the people.

His demysfitication should have been followed up with "keep at it as much as you can, even if nobody else values as much as you do". I find it sad his message got lost; even you can't produce a master piece loved by anyone else (because it is objectively just "bad") your experience is important to you.

It doesn't matter if others like it or pretend as if it is likeable; you made a painting and that's all that matters. It doesn't have to live up to standarts, it doesn't have to be appericated or notice in history. I think encouraging people to feel "this oily matter stuck on bursh is now making shapes I can interpret on canvas" is more than enough.

(I am super drunk and voliating like 3 or more curfew law things, super sorry for the murder of engrish, but I love Bob Ross)

Cherished indeed: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/bob-ross-paintings-smithso... "In a short video report produced by the Times, Joan Kowalski, the president of Bob Ross, Inc., explained that while the company does indeed store Ross’s many works—around 1,165 of them—they lack the resources to do so properly. The video shows the paintings stacked in everyday cardboard boxes, piled together in a bland office space without much of a filing system. “They’re not ‘climate-controlled,’” Kowalski explains with air quotes, adding that it’s not “white glove service.”"

Interesting to think a little about how Harberger taxes would fix this; no one can make the company treat the paintings better or do something more productive with them, because 'property is monopoly' - but if they had to pay a Harberger tax on the tens of millions of dollars those paintings were worth, they would probably discover that they can in fact do something better with them than stacking them randomly like lumber to get moldy in a warehouse or that people would happily take the paintings off their hands...

Introducing "Bob Ross - arc": Almost everytime the painting is momentarily an impressionist masterpiece and then he fucks it up with happy wheelbarrows and Rococo-style detailing.

The sweet spot is usually about a third of the way through, when he’s done blocking out the composition and has begun to lay in some good light and shadows. I’d buy a 1/3 Bob Ross non-ironically.

That would be the stage right before the RUINED comments start rolling in.

Can you give an example of a painting that started its decline in the middle?

Honestly, most of them. Especially the ones in a "denser" forest scene. The Alaska mountain ones are better.

Problem is that Bob cannot do "air". When he paints the distant misty mountain with full contrasts and color, it will do ok on its own. But then he adds the wheelbarrow with same set of colors and the mountain is not distant anymore and painting becomes annoyingly flat.

Maybe it depends on where you live? From the article, he spent a long time in Alaska. Air pollution may have been a lot less than what people are used to in cities.

I had a similar issue with Google maps when they introduced 3D views. (I don't think it supports that anymore, unless they've hidden the feature somehow; I guess they've decided it competed with Google Earth?) Anyways, my impression was "this is pretty cool, but why is it so hazy? Is it like this all the time in the bay area, and so Google engineers think this is normal everywhere?"

Could also be for the same reason N64 Goldeneye has its fog, so you have to draw less.

It's not a Bob Ross painting until it has happy wheelbarrows and friendly trees.

For me it's the GIANT, NEARLY BLACK TREE SLASHED DIRECTLY THROUGH THE FOREGROUND AND MOST OF THE SKY that he adds right at the end.

It's actually kind of funny to watch in the spirit of a cartoon where our plucky protagonist always gets to the end of a potentially nice painting then predictably fucks it up in the same way every time before the curtain closes.

Having dabbled in Bob Ross techniques years ago, that giant foreground tree was the part that ruined my paintings too. Why oh why did I add that?

It's fun to add the tree?

He addresses this in a few episodes. He said he does it to show a full range of possible details and techniques/styles, not because it's necessarily good composition.

Great little New York Times mini documentary (10 minutes) about Bob Ross Inc.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDs3o1uLEdU

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDs3o1uLEdU

This is awesome, thanks for sharing.

Interesting that there’s no discussion of forgeries? I feel like with Bob Ross paintings they’re the perfect target for forgeries. No one knows how many real paintings exist, anyone can copy them by just watching a video and as long as you practice the signature a bit yours is indistinguishable from the original.

There is a program where anyone can become a certified Bob Ross instructor [0]. So I suppose forgery might be just around the corner.

[0] https://experience.bobross.com/cri-classes/

That shouldn't be a problem. It seems like all the Bob Ross paintings are owned by a very small group. If you buy a Bob Ross painting and the provenance doesn't include any of those people you probably have a forgery.

I don't think that's true based on the article: they say that he sold 1000s of paintings in flea markets as well as before he became famous, those owners may not know they own a bob ross but the paintings exist and thus there's a plausible explanation for the forgery.

My mistake. I only skimmed the article since it was similar to a video I'd seen recently on the topic [0]. If they mentioned the flea markets in the video I forgot that detail.

[0] https://youtu.be/rDs3o1uLEdU

"If you buy a Bob Ross painting and the provenance doesn't include any of those people you probably have a forgery."

But are the buyers of his paintings actually checking, and do those who are buying just to flip even care as long as they can quickly pawn it off to the bigger sucker?

No, the sources are horrible. You can easily fake up any number of Bob Rosses and simply say, "ah yes, I discovered another one of the tens of thousands of Bob Rosses which he sold as a young man or whipped out in a charity event in a small podunk place, and the original owners prefer anonymity". In terms of provenance, the sheer number, blandness, and indiscriminate original distribution of paintings makes it sound like a nightmare. If the market were more developed, so selling Rosses wasn't so unusual, I bet forgery would become a much bigger problem (although you wouldn't be able to tell if done somewhat competently - how hard would it be to get paintings and canvases from the '80s and defeat pretty much every possible forensics? that was not long ago at all... We're not talking trying to forge Renaissance masters here.)

There are about 117 pictures which are created in the TV series, which are probably the expensive ones. If one appears as a duplicate the original cna probably be undercover es realtively easily.

Bob drew 3 copies of every painting you see in The Joy of Painting. The first one is a rough one to get the composition right. The second one is the 'proper' one, and the third one is the one you see him do on TV.

The 'proper' one, the second, was used as a reference during the taping of the show, and was off camera but in Bob's eyeline.

As such, there are NO 'happy little accidents'. Every stroke you saw Bob do was intentional and designed to show you more techniques.

As others have said, it was more about the teaching of a skill, than the actual paintings.

Source: I have watched way too many Bob Ross documentaries.

"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."

That's pretty sad, as they're probably at great risk of being consumed in a fire or maybe even being damaged by mildew.

My father never watched Bob Ross, but treated his paintings in a similar way. Many of them were nailed up in the garage.

He enjoyed painting. It didn't matter what happened to the painting afterwards.

I don't know whether learning that he was a drill sergeant detracts from the mythos or adds to it :) But great article overall. It is cool that someone can take such a huge turn late in life.

Every other time you throw "drill sergeant" into the mix people imagine instructions being belted out with profanity and insults.

I imagine there is an amusing parody sketch in there somewhere.

TLDR; Most are owned by Bob Ross, Inc., who aren't selling them currently. Also, some unknown number is in the hands of individuals who don't know they own a Bob Ross, the article is very vague about this. Not in the article, but it's actually not nearly impossible to buy one. In fact there's one on sale right now for a cool $95K at the Modern Artifacts gallery, who specializes in Bob Ross paintings.

I really, really hate this style of article. Here's a question, but before we answer it, here's 25 paragraphs of blather.

> Most are owned by Bob Ross, Inc.

For a value of "most" that is <5% of the paintings he created.

> Not in the article, but it's actually not nearly impossible to buy one. In fact there's one on sale right now

As mentioned in the article.

DeBeers model of scarcity basically.

Except the quantity of bob Ross paintings is quantifiable and finite. We will literally be mining diamonds forever.

and manufacturing

What's the TL;DR? The article is beyond my maximum possible attention span. :(

They could try to sell NFTs of the paintings, or do I still not get NFTs?

nobody does

They can sell NFTs of them, and you can also sell NFTs of them. Anyone can sell NFTs of anything. They're just an attempt to impose artificial scarcity on a post-scarcity commodity (which is to say, bits in a database).

I work in the industry dealing with art/design, and the only thing I really see NFT being useful for is a chain of custody to prove authenticity - but that only applies to newly created works, as with historic pieces you're already at a crapshoot on specialists validating stuff correctly.

edit: i use the term 'historic' loosely, i just mean stuff that has been circulating for a while.

That only works if every owner participates, and if you’ve got every owner participating in the same authority then you don’t need NFTs.

sure, i guess the thought is if you break the NFT chain then you essentially devalue your investment. it's an interesting use-case, but don't see it widely adopted in the art market any time soon.

What prevents a malicious owner from creating a forgery, selling that with the NFT, and keeping the original for themselves?

well, the way i understand it is that the NFT signature would prevent that. granted, i've only recently been looking at NFT and general blockchain custody stuff at work - so i might be missing some key parts on how it all works.

edit: unless you meant the forgery was the first to NFT - which is why i mentioned that i only see it as viable for newly created works that have not already been sold.

You can bake a digital signature into an NFT, but that's not going to help you verify a physical painting.

how so? again, i'm pretty new into researching this for physical works - but i would assume with the provenance/etc that goes into cataloging a piece, it should be...well, at least better than what we currently have.

How are you going to map a digital signature to in-depth verification of a physical painting? There are basically no possibilities here that aren't full of holes, because the real world doesn't come in discrete byte values.

i see them as a chain of custody that accentuates an already broken system of 'in-depth verification' as you put it. but again, i'm only recently looking into the validity of using such a thing. more accountability should be good, overall.

You still have to trust that nobody in the chain of custody has swapped out the physical work with a forgery.

sure, but it's an extra layer over what is currently in place.

The NFT itself can't be forged, but surely the artwork itself can be forged? How would the NFT identify the forgery from the original if the current owner is saying the forgery is the real one?

don't have the answers on that one, but i would imagine it would come with a shift in how stuff is currently done.

An NFT can contain a secret that the buyer can unlock. Presumably a pgp key or similar token. True owner transfers it to a seller upon sale. This could establish and verify provenance.

How does the key or token distinguish the original from the forgery?

Are you talking about digital files or actual physical art?

physical art/design

Is it that, or are they trying to impose fungibility on an inherently infungible asset?

porque no los dos

Here's a meme blog post that's been going around that unironically helps with understanding how NFTs work: https://i.imgur.com/NJirDQp.png

> imagine if you went up to the mona lisa and you were like "i'd like to own this" and someone nearby went "give me 65 million dollars and i'll burn down an unspecified amount of the amazon rainforest in order to give you this receipt of purchase" so you paid them and they went "here's your receipt, thank you for your purchase" and went to an unmarked supply closet in the back of the museum and posted a handmade label inside it behind the brooms that said "mona lisa currently owned by jacobgalapagos" so if anyone wants to know who owns it they'd have to find this specific closet in this specific hallway and look behind the correct brooms. and you went "can i take the mona lisa home now" and they went "oh god no are you stupid? you only bought the receipt that says you own it, you didn't actually buy the mona lisa itself, you can't take the real mona lisa you idiot. you CAN take this though." and gave you the replica print in a cardboard tube that's sold in the gift shop. also the person selling you the receipt of purchase has at no point in time ever owned the mona lisa.

> unfortunately, if this doesnt really make sense or seem like any logical person would be happy about this exchange, then you've understood it perfectly

One of the best explanations for NFTs however the NFT typically contains only a link. Thus the slip you own would say "Mona Lisa is at the Louvre" and you can receive an entry in the ledger telling you own that slip :)

I'll just leave this here, then.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article250944639.htm...

Everyone seems pretty excited to tell me that you aren’t buying the item with an NFT but the reason I suggested it is because one of the reasons they cite is sentimental value. The NFT would generate value (you own the NFT of a Bob Ross painting, maybe an entire episode) without the folks who care about the painting itself losing the sentiment, and who would buy the “second” NFT of something anyway?

I wasn’t being snide or cracking a joke about NFTs, though I think that’s how I was interpreted.

So odd. I watched a preview of Painting with John on HBO and he mentioned Ross. Said Ross was wrong. Everyone can’t actually paint.

Then I wondered if Ross paintings were on the market. Then this thread appears.

Everyone can paint. Not necessarily well.

It’s a nice catchphrase to generate attention for your hbo-series that is now teaching everyone to paint though.

I’d assumed Painting with John was as much about painting as Fishing with John was about fishing. Is he actually, seriously trying to teach people to paint?

See Ratatouille's interpretaron of "Everyone can cook".

Anyone can cook ≠ everyone can cook. That distinction is the whole point.

(And Ratatouille is one of the best Pixar movies.)

What it means to paint "well" is completely in the eye of the beholder.

Some people value technical proficiency, others emotional impact, yet others conceptual cleverness or originality, etc, etc, etc.

Trained artists often value different things in art than the general public, and critics value different things still (and often disagree with other critics).

Ultimately it just comes down to personal preference and taste.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com