Linda sent me a video link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmm-0-Rdxo8&feature=channel_page
about a young girl's skillful but strange creations that seem to be of a visionary nature. This post is not about her, but it got me thinking about child prodigy art and the 2007 documentary, My Kid Could Paint That.
In 2005 The New York Times published an article about a show of remarkable abstract paintings made by four-year-old Marla Olmstead on view at a coffee shop in Binghamton, New York. This sparked a lot of attention, television appearances, gallery shows, and art sales in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. CBS later featured a 60 Minutes spot about all this and raised some questions about the authenticity of the work. Did she really create these works without help or direction? What makes art "art"?
Amir Bar-Lev set out to investigate the phenomenon with his camera crew. There is no concise answer at the end of the film, but it is quite a story. What we do learn is that Marla is the child of creative parents who nurture her artistic tendencies. As someone who appreciates the fine points of expressive art, I enjoyed this in-depth look very much. A few years older now, Marla continues her painting "career" as reported in this recent report...http://www.lostateminor.com/2009/01/08/marla-olmstead-an-eight-year-old-art-prodigy/
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Very weird story. Hard to tell from the video what is the "real" story. Not enough background or critique is given to really figure out what's what. Who, I wondered, is the tailor for the model the kid used for the "God" portraits? Nice haircut and beard trim, too. The religious overtones are quite hokey.
ReplyDeleteThat video was quite odd, but it made me remember the movie I reviewed who actually made art for art sake...not religion.
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