Film/Documentary: My Kid Could Paint That!

[QuestionEverything]

This could easily be a SO art topic as well, but I thought I'd put it here since it stems from the film and you guys can kick it around if you'd like.

My Kid Could Paint That is a 2007 documentary film by director Amir Bar-Lev (who also directed 2000's Fighter). The movie follows the early artistic career of Marla Olmstead, a young girl from Binghamton, NY who gains fame first as a child prodigy painter of abstract art, and then becomes the subject of controversy about whether she truly completed the paintings herself or did so with her parents' assistance and/or direction. The film was bought by Sony Pictures Classics in 2007 after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

Summary

Marla's father, an amateur painter, describes how Marla watches him paint, wants to help, and is given her own canvas and supplies. A friend asks to hang Marla's pictures in his coffee shop and is surprised when people ask to buy them. A local newspaper reporter, Elizabeth Cohen, writes a piece about Marla, after first asking her parents if they really want her to do so. Cohen's story is picked up by the New York Times, and Marla becomes a media celebrity, with appearances on television and shows at galleries in New York and Los Angeles. Sales of her work earn over $300,000.

The tone of the documentary turns with a scene of Marla's parents watching a February 2005 report by CBS News' 60 Minutes II that questions whether Marla painted the works attributed to her. 60 Minutes enlisted the help of Ellen Winner, a child psychologist who studies cognition in the arts and gifted children. Seeing video images of some of the paintings attributed to Marla, Winner initially reacts positively, stating: "It's absolutely beautiful. You could slip it into the Museum of Modern Art and absolutely get away with it." The 60 Minutes reporter, Charlie Rose, then shows Winner what he describes as "50 minutes of videotape shot by us and by Marla's parents." After seeing this footage, Winner states: "This is eye-opening to me, to see her actually painting." Rose asks her how this is "eye-opening." Winner responds: "Because she's not doing anything that a normal child wouldn't do. She's just kind of slowly pushing the paint around."

Rose then states that after "our interview," the Olmsteads agreed to permit CBS crews to set-up a hidden camera in their home to tape their daughter painting a single piece in five hours over the course of a month. When Winner reviewed the tapes, the psychologist said, "I saw no evidence that she was a child prodigy in painting. I saw a normal, charming, adorable child painting the way preschool children paint, except that she had a coach that kept her going." Winner also indicated that the painting created before CBS's hidden camera looked "less polished than some of Marla's previous works." Asked to explain the difference, Winner states: "I can only speculate. I don't see Marla as having made, or at least completed, the more polished looking paintings, because they look like a different painter. Either somebody else painted them start to finish, or somebody else doctored them up. Or, Marla just miraculously paints in a completely different way than we see on her home video."[1]

Marla's parents film her creating a second work, Ocean, but Bar-Lev is not fully convinced. A couple are shown considering the purchase of Ocean. The woman complains that Ocean does not look like the other works by Marla. They buy it anyway. In a slide show, Bar-Lev compares Ocean with the 60 Minutes piece and then with several other works attributed to Marla. Viewers are left to make their own judgments.

The film also raises questions about the nature of art, especially abstract expressionism, the media's habit of building up the subject of a story and then tearing the subject down in its insatiable need to fill space; and the nature of the documentary process.

Reception

In his October 2007 review of Bar-Lev's film, Roger Ebert stated: "My own verdict as an outsider is, no, Marla didn't paint those works, although she may have applied some of the paint. In the last analysis, I guess it all reduces to taste and instinct. Some paintings are good, says me, or says you, and some are bad. Some paintings could be painted by a child, some couldn't be." [1]

In his recent review of Bar-Lev's film, LA Weekly's art critic Doug Harvey reveals a different viewpoint. "The works created by Marla on camera are different from some of her canvasses, similar to others and better than many. Bar-Lev’s big reveal is a bust, and turns what could have been a compelling inquiry into the machinations of the art market and media into a tawdry embarrassment. Apart from the questionable ethics, it’s lousy art. In the final analysis, the filmmaker’s crisis of faith is unconvincing, except as one of a series of blatantly manipulative decisions that, despite the lack of any kind of empirical evidence, bolsters the most commercially viable story that can be milked from the situation — the one where Marla’s parents are supernaturally cunning con artists out to exploit the gullibility of the deluded collectors of essentially fraudulent modern art." [2]

As of 22 May 2008, the online review compendium Rottentomatoes.com rated the film at 93% (69 of 74 reviews favorable).

Marla Olmstead's website
Anthony Brunelli's website (the artist and gallery owner that represents Marla)

 

[QuestionEverything]

OK, I met and personally spoke with Anthony Brunelli. Included in that discussion was this film. It's kind of funny that he presented it to me as if it was going to prove wrong the accusations and negative portrayal that 60 minutes and various other shows presented of her work and her father's hand in it. It did the exact opposite. I began this documentary hopeful for this little girl and without my mind made up. I left it convinced that her father is using her to gain fame and recognition and that Brunelli may have himself been duped. Of course he's a gallery owner and saw dollar signs, but his belief in her seemed genuine.

The scene that convinced me was in the hotel hallway irrc. Adults are conversing amongst themselves but the camera is focused on Marla. It catches a moment when she says that she didn't paint ''the green one'' at all . . . It has been awhile since I've watched this so I'm sure I'm leaving things out, but I can't find a clip right now. She repeats this (or something to that effect) more than once but is ignored.

 

[DarthMom]

I only saw half the film and i recall more than once the daughter saying "you do it daddy" when he is pushing her to paint something. i like how in the end, he looks all discombobulated and tries to explain it away.

i will respond more later, as i really enjoyed this documentary, but haven't the time to discuss now. glad to see the thread :D

 

[QuestionEverything]

Yes, his face when watching 60 minutes was priceless too.

The #1 most successful part of this film, i thought, was that it left the viewer to make up their own mind. I didn't get the sense that it was being made to back up either side of the argument. In that way, I felt it was very successful.

DM, if you still have it and feel like watching, refresh my memory as to exactly what it is she says in the hallway. iirc it's towards the end of the film, right before they're heading to an opening show and she says that she didn't paint the green one at all, that zane (her brother) did it. If there is one thing you can count on in a four year old, it's honesty.

 

[EA-1475]

If there is one thing you can count on in a four year old, it's honesty.

Eh... Not always. Four year olds routinely report sightings of monsters under their bed and random weird stuff like that.

You can see more of the 60 Minutes segment here.

Part of it I like was this:

Winner’s enthusiasm immediately turned to concern and suspicion. "This is eye-opening to me to see her painting," says Winner. "Because she isn't doing anything that a normal kid wouldn’t do. She’s just kind of slowly pushing the paint around. I expected to see a child feverishly and intensively working at her canvas and filling up space."

Winner says gifted children have something she calls “the rage to master," an intense focus and drive to pursue their talent.

Case in point: Child prodigy Alexandra Nechita, who at the time was 10, continues to enjoy a successful career as an artist.

Winner says she's looked at videos of gifted children, and watched them painting personally. She says the children always show excitement in their work.