Summery: My kids Could Paint That raises the century old issues on "what kind of art should be made, in what context it would be viewed, who would view it and in which ways ideology and discourse have conditioned how works are understood” (1). While a whole constellation of ideas about global economy and contemporary culture is forming, Marla Olmstead, a controversial four-year-old abstract painter has shaken the notion of art as a commodity and traditional value and aesthetics.
Amir Bar-Lev, the filmmaker, has first become fascinated with this story from an article on the New York Times for its surface theme of the world of modern art. However, with the art openings, interviews, fancy limousines and TV appearances becoming a way of life in the Olmstead’s family, the story has taken a turn to focus on the dynamic of the family, authenticity of Marla’s art and the more complex themes of art and commerce.
With the accompaniment of the first national sales and international fame of Marla, her paintings are selling between $5000 to $10,000 and a wait list for the future months to come. The paradoxical paradigms of art and commerce in this part of the documentary have been uncomfortably incorporated in the same dialogue for the reason that they are often pursued and practiced by different people with very different interests. The tension between the outburst of the media coverage and Marla’s work has commanded reinterpretation of what was once reliable and no longer is in this contemporary period.
It is interesting to see the mature controls appeared on Marla’s painting: the organic process that looks at unconventional execution of the material, the dripping, the staining, the pilling, stacking and the hanging. It just takes on this creative journey as a process that opens itself up to the qualities of non-traditional means without any pre-determined compositions or plans.
There are some parts in the film that reminded me of the association of art as a symbol of superior status quo that is marked by institutions of authority. This is how art being exclusive to one social class and excluding others. Over and over in this cultural context, art is seen as a high pursuit coupled with wealth, the power to purchase art, and the leisure required to enjoy it. With the increasing potency of mass consumption, mass media and popular culture evolved over time, art with its indefinite, function free, and form of distinction rooted in European Romanticism is challenged and questioned.
As public culture is increasing intervened by economic and political anxieties and in this case the massive media coverage like 60 minutes, the need for re-examining the questions about how the personal, emotional and aesthetic experiences are influenced by external factors, who holds the power to decide how art and what kind of art should be promoted in public sphere, and at the same realizing that art holds cultural power to communicate, influence and nourish every aspects of society.
In an epoch where French-owned Van Goghs are sold in London to the Japanese for tens of millions of American dollars, the value of art, once derived from social and aesthetic status it had within culture, is being exposed in international markets. The notion of art as a commodity is challenged most vigorously when mentioned is made to public sector, art galleries, and museums that store and exhibit these exclusive, unexchangeable and irreplaceable objects. Cultural significance can and is, by demonstrations, acquired economically and art, although unique, is not the only commodity to hold such elevated status; nonetheless in the arts the contrasts shows better than in any other realm. No matter how highly one values the art and culture, they are shaped by individuals and institutions functioning within the common economy, and consequently are confronted by the constraints of the corporal world. The film sets out to describe a sense of continued turmoil and leave readers (academics, writers, students, curators, architects, critics, economists and artists) in a space that encourages flourishing dialogues, ideas, and perspectives to continue the pursuit of how one thinks about art with regards to commerce in a modern context.
Marla Olsteam's Official Site
View Trailer : My Kids Could Paint That
1. Fox, D. (2001). Art. London, University of Minnesota Press.
