More Marla

For those who couldn't get enough of Marla Olmstead (remember the toddler artist who was at the center of a storm of publicity, excuse me, hype, in spring of 2004 and, to a diminishing degree, over the last few years? I guess no one gets old on the web...she's still four years according to what I've seen...a refresher can be found here), she's back...with a movie!

The New York Times ran an interesting piece about Amir Bar-Lev's new film My Kid Could Paint That in its January 25 edition. The article purports to be about the ethics of documentary filmmaking, but for artfolk, it's so much more.

Miss Olmstead (to whom I don't mean to sound as patronizing as I must in this entry) attracts comment for so many reasons. She's financially successful at something few American understand in the first place, let alone understand well enough to know how its market works. It's possible to see her as a prodigy or as a victim of child exploitation. And best of all, it's possible to do any of these things _ and more - without really knowing anything at all about her work. That's what cultural commentators like best - art they can comment on without ever having to see....

But it's not really Ms. Olmstead I want to talk about; it's the way she's being talked about. It's interesting to note that on Ms. Olmstead's website (in a font I'd previously thought was reserved for missives from the bridge of the starship Enterprise) appears a message declaring that "start-to-finish video documentation [is now] provided for Marla's work". If, like me, you missed the scandal that followed her success - the insinuation that her paintings had been retouched by her father - this assertion of completely individual authorship seems, well...wierd.

Arguably, Hans Namuth's pictures of Jackson Pollock painting (see above) had more impact on artists than the canvases themselves. In his hyponotic dance around the perimeters of his work, artists saw new possibilities for how a painting aight be thought of. Now that there controversy swirls around the authenticity of certain pictures alleged to be Pollocks, one has to wonder if artists should be thinking - as Marla might have been (or, as someone might have been) - of setting up surveillance cameras to record each work's birth for the security of future auction houses.

What this is all about is how artworks remain - for many - relics of an object's time spent in someone's presence. Should we appreciate a Pollock or an Olmstead because of what it is, or because of who made it and how much assistance that person had? How far down the rabbit hole should we go with this? Should we get videos of Ms. Olmstead selecting her paint at the store, so we know her palette isn't determined by some corrupting force (some people feel the intrusion of others' color ideas very forcefully in late de Kooning...)? Should we watch her grind pigment, so we know it's not just a given from the manufacturer? Should we wait for her to outgrow her clothing and sell that instead?

Artworks are interesting to me precisely because they're not people. Because they offer the chance for people to construct ideas of themselve, not endless chances to repeat who they are. Reducing a work to a surname (I'm certain no one is looking for 'browns' on eBay...) strikes me as terribly limiting to the imagination of the artist.

So here's hoping Marla had some help on her canvases, and that she learned from her helper who she was and who she wanted to be.