Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "The New York Times" channel.

@FukaiKokoro Because they aren't up for sale. There's no legal requirement that private citizens sell their things. Apparently, he and his relatives/friends are some of the few people that are putting their money where their mouths are in terms of respecting his wishes long past his death.
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@kelliea7451 I think that's probably why he's had such a resurgence the last few years. In this time of anxiety and trouble, just watching somebody take joy at something so relatively uncomplicated is worth it's weight in gold.
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@dawnofjustice4689 I think the more typical way is to set up a nonprofit and assign ownership to the nonprofit. I think the hold up is probably the cost of setting up a gallery that's capable of housing the collection. Granted, it's probably a third the size of the total and they'd probably rotate some of them in and out of the visible area, but a museum that large would be extremely expensive. I personally would love to see them loan out the work more widely or at least get it stored some place with proper climate control and security.
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As a man with both OCD and autism, this is so very, very relatable. You shouldn't be thinking about things other than what you're doing if you're going to get anywhere. He's got his pens, he's got his paper, he knows if he's got the stuff he needs to continue working and the things to do the work are themselves cues to work. It made him many tens of millions of dollars, no reason to reinvent that.
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Yep, I remember years ago watching a short documentary on comedy, and one of the comics was saying that if you've got something so dark, taboo and offensive that it can't ever be shown in public, he wants to touch and hold it. And, I do think that is right. The mechanisms that trigger laughing tend to be an attempt by the brain to reset after being given something that makes absolutely no sense.
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I'm not sure if it is modesty, he probably does genuinely question whether he is a literal tens of millions of dollars worth of funny and whatever his fee for a show is these days worth of funny. Which is even harder to define than if the laughs you're getting for no pay are genuine, let alone it being so expensive that you can literally never work again and would have to put major effort into disposing the money that you've got.
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@paullessard No, the GP is right, the whole industry is a scam. Thomas Kinkade is a really good example, his work is just not very good. But, he made tons of money over his lifetime based primarily on his name and reputation. The "value" of a lot of these pieces that you see at auction is primarily about the fact that they own something that other people don't own. It's not because the work is necessarily worth more than a different piece is. There's tons of great artists that never sell a single piece, folks like Van Gogh would not be known today if they didn't have somebody financing their unprofitable art. You're argument is that Van Gogh's work was essentially worthless because he couldn't support himself by selling paintings. You're talking about a guy who during his lifetime sold most of his work just for supplies versus now having work that goes for millions when they're even available for sale. Are his paintings really worth that much more now than back then? No, the reason for the prices is that virtually everybody has heard of Van Gogh, you don't need to know anything about painting to know that they're valuable. Same goes for most other well work being sold for large sums of money, they aren't necessarily any better than the ones that sell for a ton, they just don't have the art galleries pushing them for high prices. Dale Chihuly reportedly adds an additional 0 to the price of his glasswork that isn't selling to spur sales. If that doesn't definitively prove just how shady the industry is, then I don't know what would.
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TBH, this is one of the rare cases where the bit of bait and switch was warranted. He's not writing a joke here, he's writing a bit. Writing a bit is much more involved than just writing a joke. He's got a set of smaller jokes that are being woven into a larger one. Writing simple jokes isn't really that hard and people often times make them off the cuff. I personally struggle with figurative language at various points in my day and I can do that. I just have to be careful because I can be more cutting than I intend to be due to a lack of appropriate body language.
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Probably not more than when he was pitching the show that ultimately became Seinfeld. Plus, he probably has a bunch of other possible bits he could have used, I think he's probably just having fun. He's got the 0s behind his bank account to say that people like what he's doing.
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@GreatValueOprah Oil paintings have a tendency to crack over time, especially ones that are on canvas. They are very durable, but they do have issues that require restoration over time. His work is relatively recent, so the pigments are probably more stable than older paintings, but it does seem like there should be more care taken in terms of the air.
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@masha7377 That's a common attitude. Art is produced to be enjoyed by other people. Unfortunately, the moment a piece winds up in somebody's house, it tends to get forgotten relatively quickly. One of the great things about digital art is that it's easy to share with the world, but the downside is that it's virtually impossible to make a profit or support yourself like that, even if you do gain a following.
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@janjansen201 Perhaps, but you can already buy the merchandise just on the strength of the TV program and youtube channel. That being said, I'd love to see some of these pieces being stored properly in a climate controlled facility and loaned out on a more regular basis to museums throughout the US, if not world.
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Miyu Miyu I doubt it, the money they're making from selling those kits, books, courses and the like is probably going to be more than what they'd make from the paintings. The paintings are popular, but a large chunk of the value is that you can't buy them. He produced a ton of paintings and a lot of them look the same to people who don't really know the work. Painters who produce such a large volume of work, hardly ever see the kinds of prices that produce sticker shock. There probably is a few million dollars in the paintings, but compared with the value of the supporting company, it's just not that much.
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@SPBurt1 Not true. Value used to be based upon the amount of labor and resources that went into producing it and how much it contributed to productivity or comfort. The current situation where value is completely meaningless is a new invention that is hardly universally accepted. The ability to find a few rubes to massively overpay for something doesn't impact the underlying value of the purchased item. It just means you found a couple rubes to overpay. And unless you continually find more and more rubes, eventually you get a Dutch Tulip crisis.
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