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.
> 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.”
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?
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 don’t think it really matters either way though.
Slimy people.