Child Artist

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I watched this documentary a couple of years ago and found the topic very controversial. Marla Olmstead became famous at the age of four for her outstanding abstract paintings. Because of her age a number of issues surfaced regarding he works authenticity and whether or not a child of that can even be considered an artist.

Here is a trailer to the documentary and THIS is another lik to a Wikipedia entry about her.

 

To be honest, most of these paintings just look like someone spilled something to me. I just don't get it.
I also don't get why Tracy Emmin is called an artist either so maybe I'm just missing something

 

Supposedly art is something that exists for no purpose other than to just be.

Thus an excuse for utter tat to grace museums and galleries that are hundreds of years old and carved with exquisite features and actual skill with a material.

 

One person's tat is another person's ... um you get the idea.

That's the beauty of art. You can say it sucks and I can say it's the awesomeness and we're both right. Interesting notion though is that aesthetic 'value,' such as it is, is generally considered legitimate through consensus - Beethoven is a great composer because people everywhere think so, not because Uncle Jimmy does. Nor does Uncle Jimmy's personal opinion that he sucks more butt than any composer has ever sucked mean that he actually does. Thus there's probably a reason for the utter tat to be in museums, and it's not just because Uncle Jimmy said so.

As to Marla Olmstead, I guess it does look kind of suspicious to me, but I've found that most documentaries do in fact take a very pointed stance on the subject matter despite their best efforts to disguise it, and that most documentary makers are very skilled at getting their message across. Hell, if Michael Moore made a Holocaust denial documentary, I'd probably believe that for a while after I watched it until it occurred to me to think "Wait, what now?"

Anyway, if artistic talent is innate, then I guess a child can be a true artist. Unless you consider that that talent has to be forged and controlled before it can attain aesthetic value. I guess I'm not really sure.

 

True abstract art is misunderstood by a large part of the population. You cannot lay down a layer of paint or objects and just call it abstract. Abstraction is a process where and object or image is broken down to its essential pieces by either extracting visual elements or elements of the idea from which it is drawn. Picasso's work is an excellent example of visual abstraction.

Jackson Pollock might be seen by an untrained eye as someone who just threw down paint from buckets onto a large empty canvas. His technique was a result of years of visual training in colour and composition and an understanding of abstraction of idea.

Children have a natural ability to create beautiful art because they are not yet aware of the social expectations of "colour within the lines" and "make sure everything is evenly balanced and symmetrical." I think that given the proper materials and the freedom to create, there are many children who could produce work similar to that of Marla Olmstead. That being said, without training and conceptual understanding of what they create, I would not call them artists.

The family of Marla Olmstead was lucky and managed to hit the art scene at the right place and the right time. Unfortunately for Marla, her freedom as a child was sacrificed because her new "value" to produce monetary gain became the focus for her family. I agree with Gaear in that documentaries often have a very pointed stance on their subject material. This documentary in particular focused on the possibility that Marla's father was sometimes helping Marla complete her paintings when she was too tired or bored to do them herself. If there was ever any question of the validity of her art, that would be completely negated by having her father participating in what was supposed to be the work of art of a child prodigy.

 

I couldn't agree more. I have a 4-year old, and he colors like that all the time. In a certain says, ALL small children produce abstract art. But artists they are not.

I recently had a birthday and my son gave me a card that had a drawing of our family (as stick figures) on it. Since all the people on the card were about the same size, I wasn't sure who was who. He told me I was the stick figure with no hair (of course).

 

I guess in that sense it would be a fraud, but would there be anything wrong with the father and the girl collaborating if it were acknowledged? I can't see how that would necessarily devalue the art in and of itself.

 

@ Gaear - Well the work of the child became famous and collectable because she was considered a child prodigy. If her work had been done as an adult it would have not gained such notoriety. A collaboration with her father would put her "art" back into the category of
"lessons with daddy". Although everyone loves to hang kids art on their fridge most people would not be willing to pay thousands of dollars for it.

 

I understand the whole idea that if you have some knowledge of the background of an artistic style, you may have more appreciation for it. But I have limits. IMHO, a lot of it becomes pretentious crap, with people patting themselves on the back for "getting" what the great unwashed masses don't. I'm sorry, but there comes a time to be realistic, and a bunch of paint run through an industrial fan, or the artist's feces smeared on some corrugated cardboard is not art. It's a scam.

As for the child artist, I always am suspicious of the whole thing. If the dad so much as made one mark on it, it's a gonner, sorry to say.