Child prodigy , or coaching success story? Genuine artist, or just a kid slopping paint on a canvas? Media-created sensation, or true genius?
There are some of the questions posed – but not answered – in the fascinating documentary My Kid Could Paint That, available on DVD from Sony Classics.
Media loves a prodigy
The film recounts the story of adorable four year old Marla Olmstead of Binghamton, N.Y., who went from typical toddler to art world sensation in the span of a few months.
Beginning with a single hanging in a coffee shop in 2003, Marla’s abstract paintings – typically child-like work to some, the brilliant work of an art savant to others – became an art world sensation. Her colorful, utterly abstract canvases brought in big bucks ($300,000 worth in just a few months, according to Sony Classics press material) both from art world snobs and people who just liked the way they looked. Marla and her parents, Mark and Laura, soon became media darlings, profiled everywhere from the Today Show to Good Morning America to the New York Times and everything in between.
60 Minutes of Infamy
What the media builds up, the media tears down. The media attention, the film shows, was great for business until it all came crashing down thanks to a February, 2005 report on 60 Minutes II.
Reporter Charlie Rose, in profiling Marla and the family, strongly suggested that Marla was not the prodigy she appeared to be, but was coached by her father, a bit of an artist himself.
Based on snippets of the report shown in the documentary, the 60 Minutes II report does not appear to be an example of the venerated news program at its best – only one expert was consulted; the conjecture that Marla was coached appears to come from only a couple of sentences from her father – but the damage was devastating. (There is an extraordinary moment of true human emotion captured on Mark’s face when he realizes, while watching the 60 Minutes report for the first time, that it is not the story he was expecting. He has the look of a man who was just told his favorite dog had died.) The Olmstead’s become outcasts in their community, are subjected to shockingly viscious emails and threatened with lawsuits for fraud.
Filmmaker Drawn In
The family pins their hopes for redemption on filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev. Bar-Lev had been filming his documentary on Marla snce 2004, well before the 60 Minutes story hit, hoping to make a film on the general topic of ‘what is art?’ Instead, Bar-Lev finds himself drawn into the story, as he struggles with his affection for Marla and her little brother Zack, and his own doubts about Marla’s work.
Part meditation on art, part mystery, My Kid Could Paint That is all enthralling. Rare in this age of Michael Moore hit-you-over-the-head documentaries that tell you what to believe, Bar-Lev leaves it up to the viewer to arrive at their own conclusions – perhaps because he is so conflicted himself.
Be sure to watch the DVD extras, which update the story after the film’s debut at the Sundance Film Festival.
