Trailer for documentary about 4-year-old abstract painter
It opens October 5 in LA and NYC.
Link (Thanks, Gord!)In the span of only a few months, 4-year-old Marla Olmstead rocketed from total obscurity into international renown -- and sold over $300,000 dollars worth of paintings. She was compared to Kandinsky and Pollock, and called "a budding Picasso." Inside Edition, The Jane Pauley Show, and NPR did pieces, and The Today Show and Good Morning America got in a bidding war over an appearance by the bashful toddler. There was talk of corporate sponsorship with the family fielding calls from The Gap and Crayola.
But not all of the attention was positive. From the beginning, many faulted her parents for exposing Marla to the glare of the media and accused the couple of exploiting their daughter for financial gain. Others felt her work was, in fact, comparable to the great abstract expressionists ñ but saw this as emblematic of the meaninglessness of Modern Art. "She is painting exactly as all the adult paintings have been in the past 50 years, but painting like a child, too. That is what everybody things but they don't dare to say it," said Oggi, the leading Italian weekly. Through no intention of her own, Marla revived the age-old question, ëwhat is art?'
And then, five months into Marla's new life as a celebrity and just short of her fifth birthday, a bombshell dropped. CBS' 60 Minutes aired an expos? suggesting strongly that the paintings were painted by her father, himself an amateur painter. As quickly as the public built Marla up, they tore her down. The New York Post asked whether "the juvenile Jackson Pollock may actually be a full-fledged Willem de Frauding," the Olmsteads were barraged with hate mail, ostracized around town, sales of the paintings dried up, and Marla's art dealer considered moving out of Binghampton. Embattled, the Olmsteads turned to the filmmaker to clear their name. Torn between his own responsibility as a journalist and the family's desire to see their integrity restored, the director finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a situation that can't possibly end well for him and them, and could easily end badly for both.
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"She is painting exactly as all the adult paintings have been in the past 50 years, but painting like a child, too."
So, Cy Twombley has been reincarnated before he even dies?
The background soundtrack on that site is so loud I can't hear the dialog in the trailer, and there's no way to make it stop, apparently.
Ugh! Child "prodigy," stage parents, media feeding frenzy, art market hype, art buyers with more money and greed than sense, anti-modern-art philistines, the cult of celebrity... what's to like about this scene? Ick.
Let kids be kids, let artists be artists (good or bad), and let the media go back to covering real news, please. (But thanks for the post, Mark.)
Warning - linked site has music!
I had the pleasure of watching this film in a senak preview yesterday. It discusses and considers all the issues brought up so far, and more. You walk away with conclusions, interesting discussions; we had a Q&A after the screening with the director and it was tough to let him go (he had flown in from Toronto).
This is a solid piece of work, and not just a light "ha ha painting 4 year old" puff piece.
I won't say all but let me say that a lot of ambitious artists wish that they could paint like a 4 year old. duh- 4 year olds do great work. Most of us spend two or three years painting great stuff, and then- 20 years later- start to spen the rest of our lives wishing we could tap that again. The kid is no genius. She is just good at doing what 4 year olds should be doing. I would give her a high five.
I'd be more impressed if she painted like Rembrandt; or even did one of those horrible photo-realistic thingies. When I was 4 I put on a brilliant performance of John Cage's 4'33, but nobody was around to not hear it...
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. -- Pablo Picasso
This settles it. My children are utterly worthless.
America has long been seduced by youth: prodigies, child actors, Gerber babies, so why not a pre-pubescent artist. Even if it's not true, the fiction is irresistible. Of course de Kooning and Pollock didn't hit their marks until their early 40s. We should remember in the circus that is the art world, Lucky, the elephant at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoon who paints canvases (preferably in pinks and purples) for peantus. Want one? Only $250 for a small abstract composition. That's about what I get for my works!
Matthew Rose / Paris, France
For anyone having problems with the background music, there indeed is a small (ass backwards) "volume" icon towards the bottom of the page (if you can't see it you probably need a better screen resolution).
The movie is probably pretty interesting from the standpoint that it (as previously alluded to) looks at important questions about the nature of art and creativity.
However, it seems all pretty transparent; the above Picasso quote pretty much sums it up. Just a kid who likes to paint (most likely because they saw Daddy doing it and wanted to try), thus, highly unlikely there's anything prodigal/special about her; the point made about if she could paint like one of the great masters above sums this up too.
Also, shenanigans to this if she can't write or verbally deliver an artist's statement.
First off, it's Binghamton, not BinghamPton. I lived there for more than 20 years. Trust me, it may be in New York, but it's far from being in The Hampton's.
When I heard about this a few years ago my first thought was shenanigans. Now it's a couple years later and I'm still thinking the same thing. I've seen some of this art. It looks like a 4 year old finger painted it.
An artist paints with intention and expectation of the output (even Jackson Pollack). IMO, randomly slapping paint on canvas without intent of the end result is not brilliant art to me. I don't believe that a 4 year old has the mental capacity to understand the intent and end result of what is being painted.
You can get an original painting by Cheeta for a lot less, and it's for a good cause:
http://cheetathechimp.org/bio.html
MR
They must be running vista, all I get is a black screen (that's with flash turned on).
The thing that Pollock and others did that makes their work stand as extraordinary is simple.
They did it first.
It was the decision to remove the "storytelling" that is the essence of their contribution. They were pioneers, thumbing their noses at traditional painting and doing it very well.
They also brought a level of craftsmanship to abstract art that is a great deal more difficult to achieve than most people understand.
There are not many frontiers left of this sort, and boingboing is the penultimate place to find them when they pop up.