I just saw a full episode of his show. The fuck? I’m not a painter but I’ve seen my mom paint all my life.

This motherfucker just did in 15 minutes what would take her weeks. Like???

And he did it while talking, in clean fucking strokes. So fucking fast. I saw a literal masterpiece being created in fifteen minutes from nothing. From nothing. It was a blank fucking canvas, man.

I knew of Bob Ross, but I’d never actually seen him paint. Goddamn. How did actual artists react to him? Like, how do you not feel just thoroughly outclassed.

All while this mofo is saying how easy all that he’s doing is while I know for a fact how hard it is. Like, is he just gaslighting everyone?

  • Belly_Beanis [he/him]
    ·
    23 hours ago

    Artschool dropout here. People have mixed feelings. On one hand, he taught a lot of people how to paint and (more importantly) not be afraid of paint. On the other, he didn't challenge himself and was doing the same thing over and over, creating a lot of kitsch and commercial art.

    As far as I know, he never had any long-term projects or stuff done in private. This means he plateau'd and stayed at the same skill level his entire career. Compare that to people we consider masters, like Picasso or Rembrandt or Michaelangelo. They were constantly looking for new ways to challenge themselves and trying to unlearn everything they knew to create something new. We have a lot of discoveries because of it.

    Picasso invented collage and expanded our knowledge of 2D design. Rembrandt created the building blocks for Impressionism and Expressionism, while uplifting printmaking into its own artistic medium. Michaelangelo went out and practically invented new colors. Bob Ross, by comparison, didn't do much other than show how to paint something quickly. And speed is something all artists get better at with practice.

    Furthermore, some of my professors resented Ross for reinforcing realism as the only way of creating art, especially among normies. Ross didn't do this intentionally. It was just a side effect of making landscapes easy. Keep in mind, we're still in the Post-Modern era and a lot of my instructors were the Post-Modern rebels who suffered under their Modernist mentors. So for them, it's frustrating trying to move art forward and have people still cling to what was already done 75 years ago. Even more so when they know the Modernists before them did put a lot of labor into their work.

    Using Picasso again as an example, he'd start by drawing something realistically. Then he'd draw it again, but with less detail. And again. And again. And again. He'd get an object down to having as little detail as possible while still being recognizable as what it was supposed to represent. Then he'd compose these drawing into a painting. For Guernica, his magnum opus, he spent an entire summer doing this. There's thousands of drawings for this one, single painting he did and it's a huge painting (like 10 feet by 15 or some shit).

    Now imagine you're an art professor who knows this and some asshole wearing a Bob Ross shirt walks into your class and says "Picasso paints like shit."

    (I was told not to wear my Bob Ross shirt again)

    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
      ·
      21 hours ago

      Not an art student or anything, but I remember an expo of Frida Kahlo and one of the walls were a picture of like a chair and a window and surrounding the picture there were dozens of documents relating to the paint itself, like napkin sketches, a mini version just in black and white, Frida's writings about the picture and so on. For me that I'm not an artist it showed me all the work behind that you never see, I always tough that painters just got inspired and painted in real time, when actually there's a lot of work behind the scenes.

    • Frivolous_Beatnik [comrade/them, any]
      ·
      22 hours ago

      reinforcing realism as the only way of creating art

      I see this as the big problem. I don't think there is anything wrong with not seeking to significantly advance one's personal artistic skill or vision beyond a plateau, but Ross did contribute to the current orthodoxy of photorealism being the highest aspiration of an artist. Unintentionally of course, but the compound effect is there. As a hobbyist artist, I often struggle with trying to escape this mindset thanks to the prevailing cultural pressure that comes from corporate and profit driven motives to create, but I can't personally fault a Bob Ross type for enjoying remaining in certain niches (he certainly had more technical skill than I, so I figure I shouldn't judge on that aspect at least.)

      some asshole wearing a Bob Ross shirt walks into your class and says "Picasso paints like shit."

      Not every artist has the dedication or inclination to create works like Michelangelo or Picasso and that's alright IMO, but we hate to see something like this happen lol