My Kid Could Paint That
Encyclopedia
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 concerning 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
.
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."
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.
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."
In his 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."
As of 22 May 2008, the online review compendium Rottentomatoes.com rated the film at 93% (69 of 74 reviews favorable).
As of October 2007, the Olmstead's website displays videos of Marla working on three more canvases, "Fairy Map," "Rabbit," and "Colorful Rain." The videos employ the jump-cut technique, meaning that the scene (a shot of the canvas on which Marla paints) is generally continuous, but that the action stops and then starts again with the subject (Marla) having shifted position relative to the video frame. As of August 2008, the website depicts 49 canvases it says have been sold and 16 more available for sale, including two of the three works featured in the videos, "Rabbit," and "Colorful Rain."
2007 in film
This is a list of major films released in 2007.-Top grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the USA in 2007...
documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
by director Amir Bar-Lev
Amir Bar-Lev
Amir Bar-Lev is an American film director, producer and writer from Berkeley, California.Bar-Lev is noted for his work in directing documentary films. He has directed such films as Fighter, a documentary film released August 24, 2001. The film received a Special Jury Citation in the 2000 Karlovy...
(who also directed 2000's Fighter). The movie follows the early artistic career of Marla Olmstead
Marla Olmstead
Marla Olmstead is a painter of abstract art. By the age of 4 she had attracted international media attention. Abstract artworks purportedly painted by her have been as large as five feet square and have sold for tens of thousands of US dollars...
, a young girl from Binghamton, NY
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
who gains fame first as a child prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
painter of abstract art, and then becomes the subject of controversy concerning 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
Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics is an art-house film division of Sony Pictures Entertainment founded in December 1991 that distributes, produces and acquires specialty films from the United States and around the world. Its co-presidents are Michael Barker and Tom Bernard...
in 2007 after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
.
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
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
' 60 Minutes II
60 Minutes II
60 Minutes II was a weekly primetime news magazine television program that was intended to replicate the "signature style, journalistic quality and integrity" of the original 60 Minutes series.It aired on CBS on Wednesdays, then later moved to Fridays at 8 p.m...
that questions whether Marla painted the works attributed to her. 60 Minutes enlisted the help of Ellen Winner, a child psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
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
Charlie Rose
Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993...
, 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."
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
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
, 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 EbertRoger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
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."
In his review of Bar-Lev's film, LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
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."
As of 22 May 2008, the online review compendium Rottentomatoes.com rated the film at 93% (69 of 74 reviews favorable).
Post-release events
As of March 2011, the Olmstead's website no longer shows the videos mentioned below.As of October 2007, the Olmstead's website displays videos of Marla working on three more canvases, "Fairy Map," "Rabbit," and "Colorful Rain." The videos employ the jump-cut technique, meaning that the scene (a shot of the canvas on which Marla paints) is generally continuous, but that the action stops and then starts again with the subject (Marla) having shifted position relative to the video frame. As of August 2008, the website depicts 49 canvases it says have been sold and 16 more available for sale, including two of the three works featured in the videos, "Rabbit," and "Colorful Rain."
Cultural references
- The song 'Strange Things Happening Every DayStrange Things Happening Every Day"Strange Things Happening Every Day" is a traditional African American spiritual.It was most famously, and influentially, recorded by Sister Rosetta Tharpe in late 1944, becoming a hit record in 1945. Released as a single by Decca Records, Tharpe's version featured her vocals and electric guitar,...
' performed by Sister Rosetta TharpeSister Rosetta TharpeSister Rosetta Tharpe was an Amercian pioneering gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist who attained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and early rock and roll accompaniment...
plays during the opening credits - The song 'When I Paint My MasterpieceWhen I Paint My Masterpiece"When I Paint My Masterpiece" is a song written by Bob Dylan and first featured on the Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II compilation in 1971. The song is segued back-to-back with "Tomorrow is a Long Time" . Even though there is applause at the beginning of the song, it is in fact a studio recording...
' performed by Bob DylanBob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
plays during the closing credits - Shortly after the television premier of Marla Olmstead on 60 Minutes II, when Anthony Brunelli compares his own photorealist work to Marla's abstract paintings, he utters the documentary's catchphrase title "my kid could do that".
- The documentary names abstract expressionist painter Jackson PollockJackson PollockPaul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
early in the film as a key reference point. One of Marla's paintings, featured on the DVD cover and in the documentary, is called "Ode to Pollock" - The film uses footage of gifted children as examples of mature fascination with child prodigies, including footage of former child actress Shirley TempleShirley TempleShirley Temple Black , born Shirley Jane Temple, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia...
in Polly Tix in Washington (1933).
See also
- F for FakeF for FakeF for Fake is the last major film completed by Orson Welles, who directed, co-wrote, and starred in the film. Initially released in 1974, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a fast-paced, meandering...
, a 1974 Orson WellesOrson WellesGeorge Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
documentary which also raised questions about who gets to decide what is and is not art.
External links
- Movie official website
- azine.com/fall2007/my_kid_paint.php interview with My Kid Could Paint That director Amir Bar-Lev at Filmmaker MagazineFilmmaker MagazineFilmmaker is a quarterly publication magazine covering issues relating to independent film. The magazine was founded in 1992 by Karol Martesko-Fenster, Scott Macaulay and Holly Willis...
- IONCINEMA.com interview with Amir Bar-Lev
- Marla Olmstead's website
- Academic review of My Kid Could Paint That