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.”

I'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?

What artist does though?

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.

The painter of light

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.

Thank you, I found this very insightful.

I'd pay a decent amount of some of his darker paintings.

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

Warhol

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.

Who are "the people" you're referring to?

Everyone outside the cardboard boxes they’ve got them in, who might experience joy from seeing the paintings IRL.

Seems like he does, because those who have them are honoring his wishes.

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.

Or they could just not. You’re not entitled to them.

I don’t think it really matters either way though.

there's a documentary about this, and the people who own the rights screwed over Bob and are purely there to exploit him. they have nothing to do with his family.

People who hold them, sued Bob Ross’s son for using “Ross” i.e. his last name.

Slimy people.