My Kid Could Paint That (2007)

 
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 25, 2010 10:51 pm    Post subject: My Kid Could Paint That (2007) Reply with quote

This movie is a documentary about one Marla Olmstead, age 4 at the time, who caused a media frenzy by producing paintings reminiscent of Jackson Pollock or other abstract artists but doing so naively, with no art training to speak of. At her age, she could hardly have had much art training, after all. Her paintings are controversial because there is a question about whether she could have really done them--and about whether they are any good as art.

The movie doesn't address the second question. Maybe it's an issue that has to be left to time to settle. What sells as art is another matter, and Marla Olmstead's work was selling quite well at the time of the documentary.

Of course there have been the naysayers who think that Marla's father (or maybe someone else) did a lot of work on the paintings, and so they aren't "really" the work of a 4-year-old.

I wonder if it matters in the long run. If the paintings please people enough that they are willing to buy them, then they must have some value.

It matters, too, if the parents have calculatingly set out to exploit their child, to make her the center of media attention that is obviously bewildering to the little girl. What matters is that they will have deprived their daughter of a normal life, as her mother very movingly points out.

They seem to have succeeded in keeping her from becoming a show-off, and maybe she is one of those rare unspoilable kids anyway.

She obviously loves to paint. We see her painting in the bathtub. But she has also learned that she is doing something that really impresses the grownups around her.

She could have learned to hog the camera but she seems not to have. At one point her younger brother is about to paint something, and she says, "But Zane's painting won't be in a show, will it?" and her dad chuckles and agrees: "No, Zane's painting won't be in a show." As Zane is right there, it seems like a terrible put-down for him to have to hear that, and it seems as if Marla is all too aware that she is the pet of the family.

But that is the only sign in the movie that she and her family might be headed for stormy times as a result of the brouhaha.

I haven't seen the "60 Minutes" show or the "Charlie Rose" show that sparked the controversy, but the documentary was made in response to accusations made on those programs.

I kept wondering who made up the titles for Marla's paintings. One includes a mention of Pollock--and I doubt that Marla knew much about Pollock or even his name, and so I suspect that at least that title came from an adult.

I'm no fan of abstract art as a rule (probably because I don't understand it and haven't tried hard to figure it out), but some of Marla Olmstead's paintings (on her Website and in the movie) are stunning in their use of color and their composition.

I think we're looking at a very talented young girl whose parents perceived her interest in painting and were willing to provide her with every possible resource to develop--huge canvases, huge tubes of paint (this stuff costs)--and to let her do what she wanted. We don't see any mother hens fussing about the mess she's making. She gets covered with paint and nobody minds.

She's having a pretty good time, or at least I hope she is.
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