Marla Olmstead could paint that

By: Joshua McCracken

Posted: 9/18/08

Granted, I'd heard of the movie My Kid Could Paint That last year when it came out, but had only been mildly interested in seeing it. To those of you who are not aware, it documents child painter Marla Olmstead, who is now a big deal in the art world. After seeing it however, I must say that it is rather sad. Ignoring the whole, 'Is she really painting it?' deal, it seems obvious that pretty much everybody around her is exploiting the crap out of her.

In the course of about an hour and a half, I saw a little brother who was starved for attention, a mother who was more concerned about how it would affect her kid than how much cash she could squeeze out of her, a father who was actively encouraging the exploitation of said child and a whole bunch of art world people who were hailing her as the Second Coming of Christ because of her ability to paint like Jackson Pollock. Pollock's main claim to fame, essentially, was that he painted like a four year-old.

More abstractly, the movie seems to deal more with exactly how much a gimmick matters in the art world. The technical merits of the art are obviously not anything special; she really isn't doing anything that thousands of kids across the country do in pre-school. In fact, one of the people interviewed says flat out that if Marla Olmstead were not a child, her art would be nowhere near as special. What was also mentioned is the fact that her art is the product of childhood, and is therefore a "reaction" against the "cynicism" of the art world, yet no one realizes that the embracing of a child painter for that kind of a reason is the worst kind of cynicism.

I will freely admit that I don't consider myself a friend of the art bourgeois. However, this sort of exploitation seems really low, even for them. In essence, My Kid Could Paint That is a documentary on exploitation with undertones of commentary on the art world that is run by jaded hipsters who are under the impression that the idea matters more than
the form. The idea that this is a painting by a four-year-old means much more than her art itself, and nearly everyone, especially her father, repeats this constantly without truly weighing the meaning of the words they speak.

Don't misunderstand me, I think that abstract art has its own value and place in the art world, but it has also lowered the standards of modern art to the point where yes, even your four-year-old can become De Kooning version 2.0. And of course, when the filmmaker begins to bring up these very same points to the parents and others, everyone suddenly decides that he was out to get them all along. As an interesting side note, the only two paintings which Marla was filmed painting have failed to sell.

I really hope that this is rock bottom for the art world, I do. Maybe then we can start building art back up again. And as much as I hate to say it, I hope that the hysteria over Marla dies down so that the poor kid can grow up having a somewhat well adjusted perspective on life and art.