After my last post about the movie, “My Kid Could Paint That”, I was forced to think about just what fascinated me about this movie.  I think the most interesting part of the whole story was that a young child’s art work was recognized as beautiful.  I know very little about modern art, but I have always been a big fan of children’s paintings.  At the age of four, most children are not primarily concerned with what other people will think of their creations, which seems to make the finished work especially interesting and pure.  The documentary features art critics praising Marla’s work and skeptics who say that she is just a typical preschooler.  As I reflected on these comments, I wondered why the conclusion that this child was”normal” made her art any less fascinating.

What if the only unusual thing about Marla Olmstead was that she was given huge canvases and high quality paints and brushes and allowed to spend as much time as she wanted painting in her underwear, since that was what she preferred to wear?  She would have still opened our eyes to a wonderful discovery.  Is every child and artist, as Picasso said?

I mentioned that I also found the movie disturbing.  It allows you a glimpse of what Marla’s parents are thinking, or at least what they say they are thinking, as her fame grows and as the authenticity of her artwork is called into question.  They wrestle with the decisions that they have made to promote their daughter’s work and to put her in the spotlight.  The say that they want Marla to live a normal life, but at the end of the documentary, she is back in art world, attending showings, meeting potential buyers, allowing strangers to fawn over her.  It’s all just the kind of thing that grown-ups would do, from the perspective of Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

“Grown-ups like numbers.  When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters.  They never ask;” What does his voice sound like?” “What games does he like best?” “Does he collect butterflies?”  They ask “How old is he?” “How many brothers does he have?” “How much does he weigh?” “How much money does his father make?” Only then do they think they know him.  If you tell a grown-up, “I saw a beautiful red brick house , with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof…,” they won’t be able to imagine such a house.  You have to tell them, “I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.”  Then they exclaim, “What a pretty house!” (The Little Prince, p. 10)

It is so like a grown-up to see a child say or do something and respond by trying to produce some numbers. ”How many years ahead of her peers is she?” “ What percentage of other children his age could do what he just did?”   “What reading level is that book, anyway?” And, at our very worst, “How much money could their work be worth?”  Grown-ups are like developers walking through a breezy pine forest, envisioning parking lots, Wal-Marts, and Applebees, if they could just get others to see the potential that lies in front of them.  Wasted potential is such a shame.