October 04, 2004

• Maybe when she is a teen, or young adult or old and grey or dead and buried she can be compared to Kandinsky ... but at four? I can't help but roll my eyes at the attempted comparison. And when she attempts to paint her first three dimensional object she'll get compared to Picasso?
• Mattie's poems are about what one could reasonably expect of a child encouraged to write poetry. The work of Ms Olmstead can stand comparison with that of many impressionists and is of an altogether different order of competance. In other words, her work is not only beyond ths common run of what kids her age can do, it's as good as that done by competent adults. Amazing.
• What bullshit. Every couple of years I see one of these stories about some "prodigy" that got a paint set from his or her parents, and is compared to Pollack or Kandinsky. Those doing the comparing clearly know little about what makes a Pollack or Kandinsky special. Here's a hint: a bunch of paint randomly smeared on the canvas isn't it. For those that haven't had the opportunity, I wholeheartedly encourage you to visit a Pollack exhibition, and stand as close to the canvas as the museum allows. The complexity, detail, and layering is simply amazing.
• And please don't call Pollack or Kandinsky an "impressionist." Both belong to abstract expressionism. The principal Impressionist painters were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Armand Guillaumin, and Frédéric Bazille.
• I don't know - personally I've always found Pollack et al to paint like small children. Which is a good thing - very small children have a sense of colour and chaos that is lost when we all start trying to draw what we are suposed to. I wonder what most 4 year olds would produce when given lots of paints and very large canvases?
• berainwidth, you are quite right -- I should used abtract expressionism instead.
• When the kids were little, we went to a parents' meeting at their school and I asked the teacher why all her students were geniuses in the second grade? Look at the first grade. Blotches of green and black. Look at the third grade. Camouflage. But the second grade -- your grade. Matisses everyone. You've made my child a Matisse. Let me study with you. Let me into the second grade! What is your secret? And this is what she said: "Secret? I don't have any secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them." -John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation
• I love children's art and I particularly like this child's art. It will be interesting to see if she continues to "evolve" as an artist. I suspect she won't--that once she goes to school the inevitable self-consciousness involved in learning to become part of the group will supercede her spontaneity. Or maybe not. Perhaps, as she gets older and more complex her art will grow with her. And perhaps she'll be able to articulate what her work means. I did find it bothersome that her pieces are obviously named by an adult, and not by her.
• Bees - yes, I saw a few things I'd like to have hanging on my wall (even though I'm not a fan of the abstract), and her sense of color seems exceptional when compared to the painting of most little kids, including mine when she was young and an aspiring artist. This might be something that needs to be watched instead of trashed. If she lags someday, well, we can hoot at it, but if she keeps it up, and progresses? On the other hand, I have to wonder who named her paintings. Do the titles really get at what she was going for?
• The comparisons to Kandinsky (purest nonsense) and Pollack (there is at least some drip painting) come from her art dealer. Isn't that a surprise?
• Her use of colour is dramatic and bold and surprisingly free of the muddy messes many end up with when mixing/layering paints. Covering one canvas of that size, even with fingers and ketchup bottle (in addition to or with ) brush and spatula argues a dedication and an attention span not typical of young children. And she's produced some 40 canvases in two years (though it seems not all are six by six feet) -- so she's engaged in sustained physical effort to a degree I find most remarkable in a young person. Be interesting, indeed, to see if she continues painting in years to come. However, I'm always wary when parents seem to be involved in the act.
• It's stunning, but... the painting entitled Four made me wonder... would a 4 year old actually divide a painting into meticulously equal squares like that? Maybe I'm just cynical and Marla is really, really precocious. Or maybe an adult is "guiding" her to produce marketable work. I just hope this experience doesn't make Marla grow up to hate painting.
• I had the same thoughts as rhiannon. Hey, brainwidth, thanks for the art lecture and all, but what do you think of the kid's work. Love it? Hate it? Or is it just not worthy of an opinion because it's done by a four year old?
• Sorry to be so critical. It's just that, like I said, this kind of story crops up all the time and gets kind of annoying. Do I like her work? That's hard to say from the thumbnails we're presented with on her site. I like the choice of colors, but I suspect--again, it's hard to tell--that the technique leaves a little to be desired. A number of the works look like different colors of paint were simply smeared indifferently on parts of the canvas. As long as we're continuing the comparison to Jackson Pollack, I should note that even when using techniques like drip painting, Pollack developed a fine-tuned control over his painting, and for all their complexity and seeming randomness, his paintings exhibit a kind of intention that I don't see in Olmstead's work. For more on the complexity of Pollack's work, read these articles on the fractal nature of Pollack's painting. My main concern, though, is that this is basically a fraud perpetrated by the parents of this young girl. Between the shameless pimping of her paintings, the unlikely names of some of the pieces, and--as mentioned above--the techniques used in some the pieces (dividing the canvas into quadrants, etc.), I am skeptical. Perhaps she is precocious and preternaturally dedicated to her painting, but I doubt it.
• That the information about the pictures and the painter comes from the parents is part of why I can't simply accept these pieces as being wholly the work of the young lady. /skep-tickle bees :)
• I doubt the kid will grow up to be a famous painter and I have no idea how much of the paintings are "actually" hers, but I like them a lot more than I had expected to. I don't really see the point in going off on her and her paintings because her parents are publicity hounds. (I hope they don't spend her earnings for her.)
• Well, brainwidth, since ya said it like that......I agree!
• I do like the pictures, especially "Face" and "Aquarium" -- and would like to think all the work is hers. I hope she continues painting -- but not under pressure from parents or publicists.