In 2004, the paintings of a four-year-old girl drew media attention because little Marla Olmstead was being touted as the next big thing in the modern art world. She didn't paint pictures of houses or animals, but abstract images full of colour, and after selling to a member of the public, a local New York art gallery owner, Anthony Brunelli, decided it would be a good idea to stage an exhibition of Marla's canvasses. Suddenly her creations were being sold for thousands of dollars, and for many she epitomised the feeling that a child could equal the achievements of many more famous artists. But then the story went off the rails...
The question, "What is art?" may have been done to death, but that does not mean people will stop asking it, as proven by Amir Bar-Lev's documentary My Kid Could Paint That, itself named after the rallying cry of Philistines across the globe. It begins as an investigation into what constitutes a valid artwork as Marla's noodlings are held up as the ideal antidote to the more cynical, less friendly extremes of modern art, as being a young child she has no use for pretension or what many perceived as the inherent hostility in much of her contemporaries' craft.
One of the inteviewees, critic Michael Kimmleman, points out that with abstract art you're not simply buying into an image, but the story behind that image, therefore a Jackson Pollock is not simply a mess of paint, but the life story of the troubled artist is contained in that work as well. So it is with Marla, whose life story may have been a short one up to the point she started sellling, but featured enough novelty, and apparently enough talent, to be regarded as important. But was this the equivalent of those paintings fashioned by the brush strokes of chimpanzees and elephants that turn up on "And finally" news items?
Ah, yes, the news, which would become both Marla's best platform and her worst enemy. After the initial fuss over this apparent prodigy, there was a Sixty Minutes television expose about the girl, which amounted to accusing her of being a fraud, or at least heavily guided by her eager father Mark Olmstead. It is something she and her family have never entirely lived down, and after a while this documentary is reduced to focusing on the truth or otherwise of the Olmstead family. Interestingly, Marla's mother Laura is patently reluctant for her daughter to live in the limelight, and expresses her relief that once the scandal breaks this might all be over.
However, Marla's paintings were still up for sale long after the controversy began, so one wonders about the influence of Mark in all this. He seems a fresh-faced, starry-eyed individual, but has his need for his daughter's promotion landed him in one big scam? If it has, it's not something he's willing to admit, but you cannot help but share Bar-Lev's reservations, especially when you see the artwork Marla creates on camera and how much it differs from the previous stuff which made all that cash. The trouble is, the question is not resolved by the close of the film, leaving you to make up your own mind; they seem like a nice family, so you're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but that doubt is undeniably there. There's a Steven Wright joke that says he went to see an exhibition of children's artwork and it was all hung on refrigerator doors, and maybe that would be the best place for Marla's doodles. There's a sense here she has not earned her stripes. Music by The Rondo Brothers.
