I just finished watching
My Kid Could Paint That, a documentary
about
Marla Olmstead that came out in 2007. This post is not going to focus on Marla Olmstead's work (except to say that I really like
Bottomfeeder, see right). What it will focus on is people's responses to the media.
After watching the documentary, I Googled "Marla Olmstead" and came up with her official website plus a number of blogs, posts, and articles from when the documentary came out. I read through some of the comments and was reminded, all over again, why I don't usually read comments anywhere except on my blog (where the commenters are generally very pleasant and insightful whether they agree or disagree with me--thank you, wonderful commenters!). I am bemused by individuals who seem to exult in passing negative judgment on people they have never met. Passing judgment on movies: I get that. Passing judgment on books: I get that too. Passing judgment on politicians: well, that's kind of a given. Passing judgment on a family viewed for 83 minutes
and out of context: naaah, I don't get that.
Yet many writers, posters, commenters have accepted the documentary as THE TRUTH--with one major exception:
Doug Harvey from the LA Times.This, I find bizarre.
Here was my internal (and external--I watched it with only my cats present) response to the film: As it started, I said, "Nah, the kid didn't paint those" even though, at that point in the film, the documentarian did accept the "authorship" of the paintings. At another point, I said, "Wow, she's really smart" about the hometown reporter, Elizabeth Cohen (frankly, I think she's the best reporter featured in the documentary). I twice made positive comments about the parents. I really liked the mom, who made thoughtful observations about her role as a parent. (More about the dad later.)
Half-way through the documentary, the child's "authorship" is "debunked" by
60 Minutes. I cringed; I've never been a huge fan of CBS news. I agreed that the painting the child created for the "hidden" (notice the quotes: children are like animals; they know instinctively when an environment has changed) camera was different than the others although I thought, and still think, it resembled
Bottomfeeder. (Later, the parents did their own documentation of the child painting.) I accepted the child psychologist's statements on
60 Minutes but decided later that one child psychologist isn't enough to convict anyone (child psychologists are capable of saying really dumb things). I noted that the
60 Minutes piece wasn't balanced. I was completely unphased by the father "losing" his temper: he didn't. Besides, what is this obsession with children having pure, untainted childhoods where the parents are so good, they are inhuman? (Has anyone ever met parents like that?)
I was highly amused by one buyer finding "meaning" in
Bottomfeeder (the kid's an artist, not a philosopher), but he framed and hung the painting
beautifully. I had mixed feelings about the art dealer. He seemed to be distancing himself at one point, giving off a kind of "Hey, this has nothing to do with me" attitude which annoyed me since it seemed like a betrayal, and I think betraying people who have made you money is tacky. I also thought his comment about abstract art being a con because it doesn't take a lot of time to produce to be silly in the extreme. Taking a long time on a piece of art does not,
ipso facto, make it good. It's like those
Idol try-out singers who think they should get accepted because of how long they practiced, not because they can actually sing.
But I reminded myself that interviews in documentaries are often out of context (we don't always hear the questions asked by the interviewer). In any case, the art dealer
is very good at his job as when he persuaded buyers to purchase the "proven" (documented) art piece rather than an art piece (by the same child) that they liked better. I think the purchasers did it because they were on camera (this was after the controversy) which struck me as rather expensively touching: a $20,000 or so effort to demonstrate their belief in the artist!
I thought the documentarian breaking the wall between him and the audience was interesting, but I thought he failed to ask the right questions, namely, what does his obsession that he must "catch" the child producing great art say not just about how news is made but about
fandom? (Elizabeth Cohen, local reporter, made some insightful comments here.) I also thought he was remiss in bringing up the question of "fraud" without interviewing (1) other child psychologists; (2) a variety of art critics. In other words, he seemed to be caught between an objective look at the child's work and a subjective examination of the child and her family. He started both threads; he didn't finish both.
To continue: I had no trouble at all believing that the child painted differently when the camera crews were around from when they weren't. I had no trouble believing (I thought it was self-evident) that the father's anxiety to show what his daughter could do
sans camera led him to push the whole painting thing
on camera (at which point, like a normal 4-18 year old, the kid balked and went, "Do it yourself, Dad!" or just refused to cooperate). I thought one of the saddest parts of the documentary was when the child invited her father to paint with her, and he self-consciously declined: I didn't see it as proof that he had helped her in the past but as evidence of how much the accusation that he
was helping her had boxed him into a particular role: spectator rather than participant.
I read absolutely nothing into any of the daughter's comments one way or the other. I have nieces and nephews. Kids are the kings and queens of
non sequiturs. I personally am opposed to the use of child "witnesses" in legal situations--children can be coached to say anything and will change behavior based on outside expectations. (At seven, I would read slowly or quickly depending on what I thought my teachers wanted from me: proof that I was a good student or proof that I had trouble reading. My reactions weren't thought-out; again, it was instinctual; I picked up on body language or something.) P.S. Cynics, don't read too much into this (see comments below).
I was impressed by the parents as parents. I was also intrigued by their decision to document their child painting (clips are shown on the documentary and on the website). It intrigued me because it underlined the parents' basic "naivety" (as the father put it);
if we just SHOW the world what we see everyday . . . It also intrigued me because it backfired (to a degree). As an insightful commenter to one of Harvey's articles pointed out, the believers were actually disappointed by evidence that the painting process is mundane, not magical. (The child didn't go into a trance and sing "Kumbaya.")
I, however, found it better than magical. The clips, though brief, showed that the child did behave differently when just her family was present. They also showed that she looked over the painting as she worked: where to place a yellow blob, where to add another batch of color. Forget prodigy, people! Doesn't anyone appreciate how amazing a talent/eye that is? The only abstract art I ever painted (in high school) was a drab mess--and at the time, I could produce fairly good representational drawings.
More on this issue of the child's eye: in one scene where outside cameras were present, the child squeezed out several tubes of color and mushed the paint together. "She doesn't do that when no one is here," the father said, exasperated, and he was right, she didn't. Later, when she was more used to the documentarian, she painted a rather ordinary picture in his presence. As she painted, she carefully selected which tubes she would use, varied her colors, and filled her canvas. Also, back to the scene where she mushed all the paints together, she kept saying to her dad, "This is green, right?" And yet all the documentarian saw was "She didn't produce a work of genius in front of me!" A four-year-old who sees color, actively chooses which colors to use plus fills her canvas, and all this guy sees is that he wasn't witness to some cataclysmic event? Talk about only seeing what one expects.
Okay, the big question: Do I think the dad helped? Yes, but I'm not sure exactly what I mean by that. I think he may have told her when to stop. I think he may have presented her with a choice of colors. I think he may have urged her to continue with a certain look or style. He may even have touched up the paintings. I don't believe he actually painted them. His own art looks completely different. There's an interesting issue here about production versus eye--a person who can't necessarily create but can make a created thing better; there's also an interesting issue of art and community--few artists throughout history have created in isolation or without input.
Unfortunately, both
60 Minutes and the documentarian made it impossible to explore these issue. The moment they turned their subject into FRAUD/BAD DAD/MY SAD DISILLUSIONMENT, they closed the door on a whole host of
way more interesting questions. I thought the father reached the point where he was terrified of saying that he did
anything to help his daughter: buy the paints, prime the canvas,
anything.
If he were an editor (and she was an adult), nobody would care. We accept that editors do (and should) edit their writers' works, but a painting . . . even when the overall concept and composition is completely unique to a particular individual . . . that shouldn't be touched at all! Especially, the pure unfettered freethinking of a child!!
Am I open to the possibility that she did it all herself (except prime the canvases)? Actually, yes, more than I was before I watched the documentary.
Do I like the paintings? Absolutely. I was a tad surprised since I'm not a big fan of child prodigy singers and such, but hey, art is art is art.
Would the paintings have received as much attention and money if they weren't marketed as painted by a child? I have no idea. I mostly ignored all the stuff on the documentary about abstract art except for
Michael Kimmelman's very interesting remarks; I happen to like (some) abstract art, and I don't believe that representational art is intrinsically worth more simply because it is representational.
Should art pieces, in general, be sold for as much as they are? Why not? If the market will bear it . . . (Take stamps. Or Hummel dolls. Those make a lot less sense to me than abstract art.)
Which brings us to the whole issue of capitalism and the free market. And the point of this post.
I went into my viewing experience with opinions; I came out of my viewing experience with opinions. And I did some research after the fact. Which is all to say, I find it irritating how many commentators and commenters seemed to have accepted whatever was placed in front of them: the beginning of the film says she is a true artist: How sweet! The middle of film is all about the
60 Minutes documentary: Evil parents, bad dad! The end of the film expresses the documentarian's doubts: Frauds! Put them in jail!
A specific example: a lot of commentators (and the father!) accept
60 Minutes description of the dad's urging (in the "hidden" camera part) as "harsh"
even though 60 Minutes played the dad's statement, and it didn't sound harsh at all. It sounded exasperated. It was the equivalent of a dad saying, "Stop putting Fruit Loops in your brother's ears!" Actually, it was the equivalent of a dad saying, "You sing for me and mom all the time. Why won't you sing for grandma?!" And yet
60 Minutes said it was harsh, ergo, it was harsh.
60 Minutes created an image of "stage" parents: ooh, I hate those kinds of parents, let's make nasty comments about them on someone's blog.
Another example: her paintings now are less sophisticated. Why? Because
60 Minutes and the documentarian say/imply so. And maybe they are less sophisticated, but lots of people accepted the Vermeer fakes because they were
told they were Vermeers. Gullibility works both ways: people tend to see what they want to see, and a thoughtful person looks at his or her own sight, not just other people's. I ran across several comments that went something like, "I'm an artist, and all you people who say you are artists and say she is good—or did this herself—must be bad artists!"
Huh?
"I'm an artist" may be a valid statement. "Those paintings aren't good" is a debatable but still valid statement. "All you people who disagree with me must be bad artists" is about as huge a leap in logic as anything I've come across lately. The assumption is: my eye is automatically better than your eye
because I say so. I may believe my eye is better than everyone else's—there are some Marla paintings I wouldn't buy—but
the claim by itself doesn't make a valid argument. Again, the dearth of any actual critique (as opposed to people slinging statements around) is a
huge void in the documentary.
It's like everyone gets locked into one little box, NOT because the documentarian or CBS or the family locked them there but because they won't unlocked themselves. One of the "you are all bad artists" commenters was responding to L.A. Harvey's statement that he paints all the time and sometimes he produces good paintings and sometimes he produces bad ones. I think that's an interesting statement about artistic output. But instead of responding to the interesting statement, the commenter got right back on the "she's a fraud/no she isn't" bandwagon.
One little box. Even the commenters who have defended the family have used the claim
on the documentary that a documentary is as much a creation of "truth" as art itself. Semi-interesting idea. But why would you defend your position using a statement by the guy who created the evidence that you wish to debate?
The worst are the commenters who think they have "seen through" the parents: "The father couldn't answer a question in the last interview. So, the parents were lying! They fooled you but not me!!"
To me, this is just as pointless as anyone accepting the situation or documentary at face value. It shows a complete inability to understand the complexity of human communication or to understand the issue at any other level than "Me smart. You stupid."
It reminds me of some of my more frustrating moments in my master's program. Many students had an attitude of disillusionment: "All I learned in high school was wrong; I can't believe my high school teacher didn't teach me X, Y, or Z."
Some of the disillusioned students accepted whatever our professors said (they simply exchanged one set of teachings for another). Some of the disillusioned students maintained an attitude of cynicism: "Nobody thinks for themselves; we're all controlled by the entertainment-military-industrial complex." (In other words, it's Disney's fault.) And some students adopted massive chips-on-the-shoulder: "It's clear that nobody outside of this program is as perceptive and insightful as us!"
*Sigh.*
I didn't believe or disbelieve my high school teachers. I didn't believe or disbelieve my professors. I don't believe or disbelieve the documentarian of
My Kid Could Paint That. This doesn't mean I think truth is relative. I just don't abrogate my understanding of an issue to someone else's opinion or media presentation, I don't waste my time "outsmarting" all those horrible liars out there (talk about narrowing one's life to a single, rather boring purpose), and I don't trust CBS news on principle.
Which doesn't mean CBS is always wrong.
Here's my libertarian side: In a democracy, it's a person's
job to be skeptical but not cynical. And there's no point blaming one's lack of skepticism OR need for skepticism on the government or big business or whatever it is this week. Citizens of democracy, you don't know how free you are! Think for yourselves instead of blaming other people for what you think or don't think.
And think means
think--as in, don't judge people on 83 minutes of their lives. That's not thinking; that's just rude.
