I must have been 11 or 12 years old. To satisfy his legendary hyperactivity, my father began selling “velvet paintings” to groups of customers who, thanks to his numerous contacts, he brought together in salons in the evenings.
Updated yesterday at 9:15 am.
He and I left with the trunk of the car filled with these “masterpieces” that a Gatineau painter had created in series in two styles: landscapes of rocks and naked women whose private parts were veiled.
That was my first contact with art. And also with breasts pointed spectacularly towards the sky.
From my memory, these paintings sold between $12 and $16. My dad, who had the talk of ten Willie Lamothes, made a great pitch. He knew nothing about painting, but his talent as a storyteller took over.
When it came to his handling of negotiations, he was outstanding. “If you take away two landscapes from me, I’ll deduct $4 from the naked woman!” »
These memories came back to me when I learned that a painting by Bob Ross, who became famous in the 1980s and 1990s for the exhibition “The Joy of Painting,” in which he taught painting techniques, was up for auction.
This painter, whose hair was a work of art in itself, was second to none when it came to explaining how to create reflections in water or the mist around trees.
Bob Ross, who died in 1995, is said to have created around 30,000 paintings over the course of his career, including 1,000 for his shows (he made three copies of the same painting at different times in each episode). While some works were donated to the Smithsonian, some are kept on the premises by his heirs.
That’s why the Modern Artifact Gallery (which sells works by Bob Dylan and Jeff Koons) in Minneapolis will auction the first painting (“A Walk in the Woods”) that Bob Ross created for his exhibition in 1983. The set price is… $9.85 million.
My first reaction was to burst out laughing. Then I started thinking…
Can this painting really be worth this price? What determines the value of a work? Can an artist’s value change over time? Would we be prejudiced against the genre represented by Bob Ross?
Personally, I wouldn’t pay $25 for a painting by this painter. It doesn’t appeal to me. But I can imagine people loving it. As far as I know, Bob Ross left his mark on “popular art” in his own way, primarily through the use of a mass medium, namely television.
But how can a gallery owner wake up one morning and decide that a painting (which belonged to a woman who bought it at an auction several years ago to benefit the PBS station that produced the first season of the painter’s exhibition) now has value? 10 million?
I spoke to two Montreal gallerists with different styles. Simon Blais described this sale as “ridiculous”, which for him was just a “smoking gun”. “That’s not how it works.” That doesn’t make any sense. »
Michael Mensi from Galerie MX also shares this point of view. “It is a marketing campaign aimed at increasing the value of Ross’s paintings. You can be sure that there will be people at the sale who are there just to drive up the bids. »
Michael Mensi checked on a special platform how much Ross’s paintings sell for on average: between $8,000 and $12,000. However, two “extraordinary” works found buyers for around $150,000.
So I ask my question again: How do we determine the value of a work of art in a context where no one agrees on the value of the Mona Lisa?
Michael Mensi admits that he sometimes has difficulty finding his way around. As for Simon Blais, he prefers to rely on the historical and plastic interest of the work, its originality and the consensus that the artist’s approach achieves among professionals.
Ryan Nelson, the gallery owner behind the sale of the Bob Ross painting, argues that the artist is part of art history by surpassing Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso as the top artist searched for on the internet.
Weak defense. Picasso and Warhol don’t teach us how to paint clouds via video.
I have often thought that what makes a work valuable is its pioneering role in the progression of art. If the Automatists’ paintings sell for so much, it is because they were among the first to make abstractions in Quebec.
However, Bob Ross is far from the first to paint landscapes like he did.
Art is a huge market today. The difficulty is separating the lure of profit from the true value of an artist. Is the banana stuck to the wall by artist Maurizio Cattelan really worth $120,000? Does Banksy’s self-destructed work deserve to sell for $31.3 million?
There are days when I think that these numbers that no longer mean anything are part of art itself. This price increase is so disproportionate that it has become a kind of artistic achievement.
We want to have clear and precise answers about art. He refuses to give it to us. That is exactly his reason for being.
While I wait to see how much Bob Ross’s work ultimately sells for, I’m pleased to learn that velvet paintings are now going for a few hundred dollars at flea markets.
My father would be proud! He who told his customers that one day the value would increase.