My Kid Could Paint That

We were very fortunate to have the opportunity to see this film at Sundance 2007. The filmmaker attended the (Salt Lake City) screening we went to, and graciously answered a lot of questions audience members had about it. As you can tell from the title and the plot summary, this was about a little 4 year old who seems to have a lot of talent for modern art. On the surface, there are a lot of questions raised about the nature of modern art, among other things, and that in itself would have made an interesting documentary. Refreshingly, about half way through the making of the documentary, 60 minutes did a story about this child and the result of that story changed the course of the documentary as well. I loved the way the filmmaker raised questions that he didn't answer...because he truly didn't know the answers. This was thoughtful and well done, and a thoroughly enjoyable filmgoing experience! I hope this has a measure of success.

Watching this documentary is like sitting on a jury. You have to decide if there is a reasonable doubt, as you may never know the full truth.

Amir Bar-Lev does a good job of presenting the facts to the jury. He is assisted by a "60 Minutes" piece on the same subject. Did this four-year-old really paint these pictures, or was she helped by daddy or, as one person suggested, by the gallery owner? One has to look at the father and make a judgment, as the little girl cannot really tell us what we want to know. he does appear shifty and one has to believe that he is certainly capable of doing the enhancements. There are certain things in the paintings themselves that indicate that they were not done by a four-year-old.

The mother appears to know, but is protecting her family. I think she wishes it would have never started.

It is an interesting work and each person has to sit in the jury box themselves and give a verdict.

I think this movie says a lot of about America. The capitalist system leads to the most terrible behavior in the most average of people. When money becomes a factor in art, art will inevitably suffer. Obviously the desire of every artist is quitting their job and living off their work. I think this was the intention of the father and when he failed he had to rely on his daughter and did so without thinking of the consequences.

It's also interesting to note that the movie exploits the parents, but that the parents exploit their daughter which is even worse. The poor younger brother as well, "I helped paint that one" and they don't even acknowledge him and never mention the effect of ignoring him while praising their famous daughter. Who's exploiting who here? Even the filmmaker has to acknowledge that he's taking advantage of the daughter by putting her on film and sensationalizing her story.

Not a particularly well done documentary – the director doesn't get good enough footage to assemble a "complete" documentary, and it feels a little sloppy in the end. But Bar-Lev, whose second feature documentary this is, was lucky enough to chance upon an controversy that engages the audience nicely. I've certainly been thinking about it a lot for the past couple of days. The film is about a four year-old artist, Marla Olmstead, who took the art world by storm in 2005 with her amazingly sophisticated and beautiful abstract paintings. Marla's output produced a good $200,000 between '05 and '06. Bar-Lev wanted to document this child prodigy, but in the middle of his time spent with the family, the infotainment show 20/20, just one of a host of television news shows that covered the story, broke the angle that Marla's father, an amateur painter himself, may have coached the girl. All Hell breaks loose, the parents become pariahs, and they look to Bar-Lev as a possible savior. Unfortunately for them, Bar-Lev, who all the time has been trying and failing to get film of Marla painting one of her "masterpieces", is swayed by 20/20. It's a lot of fun to look at the evidence provided, to try to read the body language of the parents and try to read between the lines with them. You also have the issue about whether Marla herself was being exploited, which can raise a lot of debate. The film also works as an exploration of modern and abstract art. I myself am a fan of it, and I think there have been plenty of truly beautiful works of non-representational art. But, yeah, there are definitely paintings, some on display at an art auction going for millions of dollars in this film, where even I think the title of the documentary puts it perfectly. Most people are far less accepting than I. The film shows just how much the genre sticks in the craw of the general American public, and, in a sequence where the parents share a host of nasty e-mails with Bar-Lev, many seem just as angry that any of these paintings sold in the first place as they do that the paintings may be a sham. Even the 20/20 segment angles itself as an attack on non-representational art. Also featured are clips of a John Stossel news documentary about abstract art that I remember seeing a while back that really got my goat and has literally been making me angry for years now. Like many documentaries, the film benefits greatly from its DVD extras, which include a 30+ minute followup (which actually caused me to lose some sympathy for the parents; I seemed to be one of the few people who watched this movie and sympathized with them), and a great 15+ minute defense of abstract art by New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman.

Fascinating documentary about a 4 year old girl who makes abstract paintings that sell for thousands of dollars. The question is raised by a 60 Minutes piece which questions whether or not the girl is actually doing the work herself (I say she is, and that this whole "controversy" is beside the point). But the bigger questions concern the unanswerable, as in "what is art?" If a little girl who is just sort of playing can make beautiful abstract paintings, then how hard could it be? What do we consider art? What are the criteria? The story of what the family went through as the result of the hatchet job by 60 Minutes ultimately makes the film a far more interesting one than it would have been otherwise. And at times the tables are turned on the filmmaker, as he becomes a figure in the film, questioned by its participants. Is this a good movie? Let's just say that I liked this film enough to watch all the "special features" on the DVD, something that I never do. See it.